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TH2 CALVERT SERIES 
HILAIRE BELLOC, General Editor 


Pb GATHOLIC GENRCH AND) THE 
APPEAL TO REASON 


THE CALVERT SERIES 
HILatrE BELLOC, General Editor 





Belloc: THe CaTHotic CHURCH AND History 
Chesterton: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND CONVERSION 
McNabb: THe CATHOLIC CHURCH AND PHILOSOPHY 
Ward : THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE APPEAL TO REASON 


Windle: Tur CATHOLIC CHURCH AND ITs REACTION WITH 
SCIENCE 


THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 
AND 
THE APPEAL TO REASON 


BY 
LEO ‘WARD 





“L*homme est visiblement fait pour penser; c'est toute 
sa dignité et tout son merite; et tout son devoir est de 
benser comme il faut." —PASCAL 


New York 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1926 


All rights reserved 


COPYRIGHT, 1926, 
Br THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 





Set up and electrotyped. 
Published September 1926. 


Printed in the United States of America by 
THE FERRIS PRINTING COMPANY, NEW YORK. 


Nihil Obatat 
ARTHUR J. SCANLAN, S.T.D. 
Censor Libroram. 


Imprimater 
Patrick CARDINAL HAYES 
Archbishop, New York. 


New York; June §; 1026. 


Parts of the present book have 
appeared as articles in the Dublin 
Review and the New Age and are 
reprinted by permission. 


EDITOR’S PREFACE 


IF there is one idea more deeply rooted than an- 
other in the modern world outside the Catholic 
Church, it is the conception that some natural 
antagonism exists between the Catholic system 
and the conclusions, positive and negative, of the 
human reason working independently upon the 
universe in which it finds itself, and coming to 
its own final judgments. 

By an irony which perpetually appears in the 
field of religious debate, that very faculty which 
should enable us to perceive the absence of con- 
flict is made the cause of conflict. In proportion 
to the power of a man’s reason can he distinguish 
categories one from another: in proportion to 
that power is he free from the error of confound- 
ing ideas with words and of confusing totally 
different principles because the formule for them 
may happen to contain similar phrases. 

The belief that there is a necessary conflict be- 
tween the Catholic system and the human reason 
is based upon two false conceptions which it is 
the special task of the Catholic apologist to 

7 


8 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


dispel. ‘The first is the conception that the Cath- 
olic system consists in a number of detached 
affirmations with no logical connection binding 
them —a mere agglomeration— each unit of 
which is either fantastically marvellous or insane 
because it reposes upon no real ground for con- 
viction. The second is the conception that a 
truth can only be known in one of two ways— 
by deductive proof from an established general 
principle, or by the direct appreciation of the 
senses and inductions from such direct appreci- 
ation. , 

Now both these conceptions are false. The 
Catholic system is an organic whole far more con- 
sistent than any philosophy opposed to it, or 
neutral to it. A man may reject it, but he can- 
not reject it on the ground of its particularism; 
for if he does that, he shows himself ignorant of 
his subject matter. The Catholic system is not 
one of many; it is not to be chosen out of a heap 
of similar things all making similar claims; it is 
unique. Alone of any system propounded to the 
mind of man it bears two marks which render it 
thus a thing of itself amid the turmoil of human 
thought and speculation, in that it proceeds from 
the most general conceptions of all on and down 
to its last details, and that it claims divine and in- 


Editors Preface 9 


fallible authority. It is based upon a thorough 
examination of the last nature of things: begin- 
ning with the prime question, whether the pur- 
pose of things can be discovered at all, proceeding 
to the second, whether there be a God, and thence 
by successive steps to an examination of all that 
is necessary to be known for the higher end of 
man. But it does not convince by such a process. 
It convinces by the effect of a Personality, an 
authority manifest. “Those conclusions which 
the Faith reaches in the processes of examination 
and propounds whether the hearer has ex- 
amined them individually or no—a Personal 
God, human immortality, the Incarnation and 
all its consequences in the Church—are often 
separate from lesser experience; they are always 
(as are the foundation and implications of every 
science) intermixed with mystery—that is, with 
truths beyond, but not contrary to, reason. 
They are never of a kind which pure reason 
must reject. 

And the second conception is false. It is not 
true that one cannot be sure of a thing save by 
deduction from a general principle, or by a direct 
appreciation through the senses. ‘There is a 
third method, a method by which we recognise 
truth through a convergence of a vast number of 


10 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


processes of different kinds through what might 
be called, in a mathematical metaphor, integ- 
ration. 

You may know that a tree is an oak tree with- 
out having seen it, deducing this truth from an 
already ascertained certitude that a tree is present 
in such and such a place, and that in view of the 
evidence nothing but an oak tree could be there. 
Or you may be certain of that oak tree by an ex- 
act physical examination, noting carefully the 
contour of many leaves, the nature of the bark, a 
specimen in section of the wood. But you are 
not only as sure, you are more sure, that your 
oak tree is an oak tree when you see it as a whole, 
though you see it from a hundred yards away, 
where you cannot perceive the detail of the bark 
or of the leaves—and you are sure through the 
faculty of integration. You have received an 
indefinite number of converging evidences in 
shape, colour, situation, etc. With no process of 
deductive thought and no close series of analysed 
physical tests, you say the thing is an oak tree. 

‘There are two propositions in connection with 
the truth of the Faith and its supposed conflict 
with reason, which propositions reason itself can 
distinguish—but rarely does so, ‘The first is the 
proposition that the truth of a system or of a 


Editor’s Preface 11 


thing is established by reason; the second is the 
proposition that the truth of a system or a 
thing can only be established by reason. It isa 
characteristic confusion of many a modern mind 
that these totally variant statements are confound- 
ed one with another. If it be expected that the 
Faith shall be proved as a mathematical proposi- 
tion is proved, then the expectation will be disap- 
pointed, and if anyone having the Faith be so 
foolish as to make the claim, he does the Faith an 
ill-service. But if, on the contrary, an opponent 
maintains that nothing is known or can be 
known save as truth dependent on mathematical 
proof is known, let him consider such truths as 
our recognition of personalities, our certitude in 
the external universe, the continuity of our in- 
dividual moral responsibility—and any number 
of other certain facts which are not proved, but 
appreciated and only known by an essential 
quality in them conforming to what they should 
be. So it is with the Faith, which is held prin- 
cipally because it is found to conform to what 
the Divine Authority claims it should be. 

H, BELLOc. 





CONTENTS 
PART 
I, FAITH AND REASON . 
(a) The Nature of the py 
(b) Regarding First Principles . 
(c) Reason and Conscience versus 
Imagination 


II, DIVINE AND HUMAN REASON .. .. 
(a) Man’s Problem and God’s 
Solution . : 
(b) Pascal’s pated: 
(c) Divine and Human Faiths . 
SUPPLEMENT TO PART II . 
Nature and Supernature 


III. ‘THE Gop-MAN . 
(a) Approaching the eyicercg 
(b) The Nature of the Evidence 
(c) The Claims of Christ . 
‘((d) The Gospel of the 
Resurrection 


IV. ‘THE MIND OR THE CHURCH ... .. 
BIBLIOGRAPHY . 


ov a ov) 


PAGE 


17 


43 


60 


66 


»» 100 
pe 





THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 
and 


THE APPEAL TO REASON 





PART I 


FAITH AND REASON 
(a) The Nature of the ‘Appeal 


The title of this essay may seem to imply 
something far more ambitious than its author 
and editor really contemplate. It is not an apolo- 
getical treatise. Indeed it can hardly be described 
as an argument. Any attempt to present an 
adequate argument for Catholicism in the space 
of a hundred pages would indeed be an insult 
to the reader as well as an irreverence to the sub- 
ject itself. The purpose of this little book is 
rather to suggest certain lines along which a non- 
Catholic student might profitably travel in order 
to gain a general view of the age-long contro- 
versial war which has been waged about the 
Catholic Church, That war has been conducted 
on many fronts throughout the civilised world. 
It has been waged among historians, philoso- 
phers, and men of science, as well as among 
students of public affairs. But, whatever side 

17 


18 Catholic Church and the ‘Appeal to Reason 


we take, it is surely important to form a clear 
view of the real issues at stake in so large a con- 
troversy. At the lowest, it is certainly worth 
while to understand the motives which in- 
fluence the conduct of at least one-sixth part 
of the human race, the largest religious body in 
Germany and the United States on the one hand, 
and in Poland, Spain and Brazil on the other, 
and to know how far that conduct is based upon 
religious principle or inspired by religious ideals. 
Surely it should be part of a liberal education 
to investigate a philosophy and an institution 
which have played so prominent a part in the 
history of mankind and have largely created the 
civilisation to which we belong. Yet how com- 
paratively few among our fellow citizens in Eng- 
land or in America do really avail themselves of 
the means at their disposal for such an enquiry! 
Macaulay held that “‘there is not and never was 
upon this earth a work of human policy so well 
deserving of examination as the Roman Catholic 
Church.”” Yet he himself appears to have in- 
vestigated it mainly at second hand from German 
Protestant sources! If, then, the present little 
book can act as any kind of inducement to its 
readers to undertake such a task, it will have 
achieved its purpose. 


Faith and Reason 19 


However, before entering on the subject itself, 
a word of explanation or apology is due to Pro- 
testant readers. In the present essay the word 
Christianity will be used for the sake of clear- 
ness as meaning the historic faith of the Catholic 
Church. Of course this does not imply a failure 
to appreciate the loyalty shown by Protestants 
to many Christian doctrines and principles which 
we hold in common. It merely means that the 
author, who has always been a Catholic, is not 
in a position to discuss interpretations of Chris- 
tianity which are unfamiliar to him. Asa Catho- 
lic he looks to a particular definite standard in 
faith and morals, and it is that standard which 
is at present under discussion. A Catholic is 
often aware of his own moral poverty in the 
presence of his Protestant friends. But he claims 
to be the unworthy representative of a whole re- 
ligious system from which their Christian doc- 
trines are derived, and of which they are part. 
And he is convinced that in the long run it will 
be found that the part involves the whole and 
cannot be maintained without it. To say this is 
no more than to confess the faith of a Catholic 
before proceeding to discuss ““[he Catholic 
Church and the Appeal to Reason.” 
What then is the nature of the appeal to rea- 


20 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


son which is made by Catholic Christianity? It 
is based upon the belief that the Divine Reason 
itself has been revealed to men in an historic Per- 
son and in a visible society established by Him, 
The Catholic Church teaches, first, that the Per- 
son of Christ is the person of the eternal Word 
or Mind of God, the Son equal to the Father, 
“through whom all things were made and with- 
out Whom was made nothing that was made’ 
(St. Johni. 3). And, secondly, that He who was 
truly God and equal to the Father “‘took the 
form of a servant . .. humbled Himself... 
[and] became obedient unto death” (Phil. ii. 8), 
in order to show men the true purpose of life on 
earth and teach them all the truths necessary for 
its realisation. 

To this it adds that the divine life and teaching 
are perpetuated on earth by a society of men 
which St. Paul identifies with Christ Himself as 
the “‘body”’ of which He is the “‘head”’ (Eph. iv. 
11-16, etc.). This body of men has a divine 
mission (1) to all nations, (2) teaching them 
all that Christ has commanded, and (3) exer- 
cising His authority in all ages: “‘Go ye and teach 
all nations... . teaching them whatsoever 
things I have commanded you and behold I am 
with you always’ (St. Matt. xxviii. 18-20). 


Faith and Reason oH 


Therefore, as the expression of the Divine 
Reason, the teaching of the Catholic Church 
must be (a) one and unchanging, consistent with 
itself in every part; (b) reasonable and so ac- 
cessible to the human mind; (c) containing, at 
least by implication, all truth which human wis- 
dom has ever realised or can realise in the sphere 
of religion; but also (d) going beyond what hu- 
man wisdom can fully comprehend or could dis- 
cover for itself, 

Let us consider for a moment the meaning of 
this last consequence: the divine teaching goes 
beyond (though never against) human reason. 
God is infinite and we are infinitesimally small 
by comparison. Indeed there is no comparison 
possible. It is therefore to be expected that part 
of His revelation will reach beyond the limits 
of our earth-bound reason, which must itself be 
gradually purified in order to understand more of 
it. Reason must be used as far as it will go; but 
it must acknowledge its own limitations, It may 
therefore be thoroughly reasonable to acknowl- 
edge some of the most fundamental truths as 
mysteries, a mystery being defined as “‘a truth 
which is above reason but revealed by God.” 

The Catholic then may use his reason as far as 
it will go. His reason, indeed, justifies his ac- 


22 Catholic Chutch and the Appeal to Reason 


ceptance of a divine authority. “This authority 
(a) confirms many truths arrived at by human 
reason alone, (b) corrects many fallacies of his 
individual reason, and (c) teaches supernatural 
truths which, though they transcend human 
reason, complete its conclusions. He can use 
his reason fruitfully on these truths known by 
faith and so arrive at a certain degree of under- 
standing of what he cannot comprehend in its 
fulness. But, if he is confronted with a situa- 
tion in which his own reason seems to be op- 
posed to that of the Church, he holds that it 
is more reasonable to submit his limited mind 
to the unlimited wisdom of Christ’s divine 
revelation. All depends on the validity of the 
Church’s claim to a divine mission. Our Lord 
Himself did not offer proofs of individual doc- 
trines, but of His divine authority to teach. 
Neither need those to whom He said, “‘he that 
heareth you heareth Me’ (St. Luke x. 16). 
Reason then may be used in the defence or analy- 
sis of individual doctrines, since all are parts of 
a consistent whole. But we must be able to 
“give a reason for the hope’’ (I Peter iii. 15) on 
which these individual doctrines are based. 

‘The Catholic Church has always insisted on 
the appeal to Reason as the only secure basis for 


Faith and Reason 23 


consistency and the only means of saving reli- 
gion from the endless vagaries of human imagina- 
tion and inclination. Cannot mere “‘feeling’’ 
lead us into paths which we would infinitely 
rather never have trod? Only reason and prin- 
ciple can put up a tolerable fight against the un- 
deniable perversity of our nature, and even these 
can only do soif they are completed and crowned 
by a reasonable faith (which goes beyond them 
while it completes and directs them) . 

This age-long insistence on the appeal to rea- 
son is winning for the Catholic Church the 
grateful recognition of many of the ablest minds 
to-day among the younger generation in France, 
Italy, and other countries. “These are simultane- 
ously returning to logical realism and to the 
Faith, and are acutely conscious of the need of an 
absolute standard in ethics. But in 1906, when 
Pope Pius X condemned the Modernist doctrine 
that “‘Faith is a blind religious sense springing 
from the depth of the subconscious under the in- 
fluence of the heart,’’ and affirmed instead that 
it is ‘‘a true assent of the intelligence to truth,” 
he was accused of having declared war on the 
whole of modern thought. To a sceptical world 
hesitating between idealist and pragmatist 
philosophy such words seemed the merest obscur- 


24 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


antism. Even now, though the tide has turned in 
France and is turning elsewhere, the popular 
philosophy of the age is still violently opposed 
to the use of logic in the sphere of religion. 


(b) Regarding First Principles 


In his Cruise of the Nona Mr. Belloc has de- 
fined the popular philosophy which still so 
largely occupies the Western mind outside the 
Catholic Church, as a “sceptical pantheism."’ * 
He believes that it came among us as an emotional 
reaction against the rationalism of the eighteenth 
century, and therefore (in its most popular ex- 
pression) took the form of a reaction against 
reason itself. It dispenses with intellectual 
analysis and intellectual foundations by an 
affirmation that truths can be recognised by feel- 
ing and imagination. It thinks to find an in- 
tellectual justification in the words of Pascal, 
‘the heart has its reasons, of which the head 
knows nothing.”’* Mr. Belloc writes of it: “‘this 
emotional protest against rationalism appealed to 
the vivid response awakened in the human heart 


+P 24F, 

*Pascal’s Pensées (Brunschvicg edition, Hachette, 1920), p. 
458. All citations from the Pensées in this book are from this 
edition. 


Faith and Reason 25 


by the life of nature. Such a trend could only 
end in Pantheism: and Pantheist the modern 
world, outside the Catholic body, has become.”’ 

It is certainly true, but nevertheless surprising, 
that this movement often appeals to Pascal as its 
prophet. In spite of the repulsion which we per- 
sonally feel for his Jansenist tendencies and for 
what was really a grossly unfair treatment of 
the Jesuit moralists in his Provincial Letters, it is 
difficult to imagine Pascal among the modernists! 
His Pensées have been recently acclaimed by the 
Catholic bishops of France among the glories of 
Catholic thought. He himself proclaimed his 
loyalty to the Church of which Rome is the 
centre, in spite of words uttered impatiently 
against the Holy See and often quoted,’ and it is 
at least difficult to maintain that he was opposed 
to the use of reason in matters of religion.* It 

®Professor H. Chevalier of Grenoble, one of the ablest 
living critics of Pascal, is convinced that he retracted them 
before his death. See his Pascal, 7th edition, Paris: Librairie 
Plon, p. 338, etc. 

“It may be objected that Pascal wrote, “‘it is the heart which 
feels God and not the reason’”’ (p. 458) and “to know God 
(connaitre) without loving Him is really not to know Him.” 
But then he also says that it is the heart which perceives that 
there are three dimensions in space (p. 459). As M. Chevalier 
has so clearly shown (in his Pascal, pp. 302, etc.) this knowl- 


edge of the heart which Pascal incorrectly calls ‘‘faith’’ is not 
regarded by him as a substitute for the use of reason in religion 


26 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


is true that like Newman he condemns a mere 
rationalism, that “‘liberalism’’ which Newman 
describes as “‘the use of reason where it cannot be 
brought to a successful issue and is therefore 
out of place.’’ But if ever reason, rightly used, 
was made the whole secret of man’s dignity it was 
by Pascal. “I can conceive a man,”’ he writes, 
“‘without hands, feet, head (for it is only ex- 
perience which teaches us that the head is more 
necessary than the feet). But I cannot conceive 
a man without thought: it would be a stone or a 
beast!’’® ‘True, he admits that in practice man 
is usually guided by imagination and not by 
reason. But such guidance is actually his great- 
est misery, since our imagination is the plaything 
of sickness and self-interest, of the senses and of 
pride. His denunciation of it is characteristically 


as far as it will go. ‘‘Would to God,’’ writes Pascal, “‘that we 
knew all things by instinct and feeling. But nature refuses us 
this benefit; on the contrary she has given us very little knowl- 
edge of things in this way; the rest can only be acquired by 
reasoning. That is why those to whom God has given the 
faith (la religion) by a feeling of the heart are happy and 
legitimately persuaded. But to those who have it not we can 
only give it by reasoning’ (pp. 459, 460). Moreover he 
defines the normal method of reason thus: ‘‘Principles are 
felt; propositions concluded; and the whole with certitude 
though by different ways.’ On his use of the word “‘feeling’’ 
see Chevalier, p. 305. 
° Pensées, p. 486. 


Faith and Reason 27 


vigorous. “‘It is the deceptive part of man, mis- 
tress of error and falsehood, and all the more 
misleading (fourbe) because it is not always so; 
for it would be an infallible rule of truth if it 
were only an infallible rule of untruth. But 
being usually false it is not stamped with its 
true nature, but it stamps truth and falsehood 
with the same character.’’® Pascal, then, can 
hardly be accused of substituting imagination for 
thought. Indeed, in the famous passage so often 
quoted he maintains that our very hearts have 
‘reasons’; and reason cannot contradict reason. 
But reason can recognise its own limitations, and 
this recognition he regards as supremely reason- 
able.” So he comes to the conclusion that there 
are “‘two excesses, to exclude reason, and to ad- 
mit nothing else.”’ ® 

What, then, are these ‘‘reasons of the heart’ 
to which he refers in the fragment so often 
quoted? We think that his meaning can fairly 
be stated thus: ‘There are stages in all investiga- 
tion when the reason itself is most reasonable in 
admitting the truth of something which it can- 
not understand. For instance, there would seem 


*P, 363. 

™“T1 n ’y a rien de si conforme a la raison que ce désaveu de 
la raison’’ (pp. 456, 457). 

®Pp. 451-459, 


28 Catholic Chutch and the Appeal to Reason 


to be an element which is not purely rational in 
the acceptance of first principles in the moral 
order as well as in the mathematical, in the answer 
to such questions as ‘‘Does anything exist?’’ or 
“Is there any purpose in things?’’ ‘Have I the 
power to think or choose?’ Such answers, he 
thinks, are given by the heart rather than by the 
head. “Principles are felt’’; he writes, ““~proposi- 
tions concluded.”’ 

Here it is important to note that he differs, at 
least in expression, from the traditional Catholic 
philosophy.® Most Catholic philosophers 
would contend that such first principles are ap- 
prehended by the head, 1. e. by a simple act of the 
intelligence, as axioms are apprehended. They 
would attribute the failure to apprehend them to 
the self-centred nature of man which prevents 
him from seeing the true proportion of things. 
‘Therefore they would say: ‘‘Purify the heart 
and Reason will see the truth’’; whereas Pascal 
would say, “Purify the heart and if will see the 
truth.”” But even such perceptions of first prin- 
ciples are ascribed by Pascal to “reasons of the 


°I have here ventured to suggest an application to Pascal 
of Fr. Marin-Sola’s criticism of Newman, i.e. that on the sub- 
ject of faith and reason it is in expression (not in thought): 
that he really differs from traditional Catholic philosophy. 


Faith and Reason 29 


heart.” “They cannot go against reason. Above 
all, they must not proceed merely from the 
imagination, a danger against which he con- 
stantly warns us. But we may note in passing 
that, whether they are recognized by the head or 
by the heart, such first principles are as easy (or 
as difficult) of recognition to the simplest as to 
the deepest intelligence. So, also, are the most 
obvious (and most essential) deductions from 
them. 

Let us see, then, how Pascal actually treats 
the question of such a first principle. We will 
take the most urgent of all in his eyes: Is there a 
purpose in things? For Pascal the admission of 
*‘a purpose in things’ involves by implication 
the whole Catholic idea of God. He sees only 
two reasonable possibilities, the full Catholic 
conception of God on the one hand, and doubt 
on the other, and he appears to be asking us to 
wager between these two. But this is a typically 
French point of view, and we need not expect 
a contemporary English or American reader to 
adopt it. William James protested against such 
an alternative. But, as we shall see, it is the 
question of whether there is any purpose in life 
which is really the subject of his famous 


30 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


“wager.’’?° Let us therefore state it in these 
terms: We have to stake everything on one of 
these two decisions, either (1) that there 1s a pur- 
pose in things (and therefore for us a purpose in 
life): or (2) that there is no purpose in things. 
We cannot really refuse to wager, for by doing 
so we imply that (for us at least) there is no 
purpose in life and therefore we are justified in 
living merely according to inclination. 

Pascal’s famous argument is addressed to the 
typical man of the world who is wasting his 
time—making money or amusing himself with 
studies or sport (treating these things not as a 
means to the end, but as the real purpose of 
his existence). He is trying to induce him 
to take life seriously. He therefore argues 
that in practice he cannot help staking all 
on one or other of these propositions: A, that 
there is a purpose in life, or B, that there is not. 
He knows that human selfishness, however we 
may disguise it, is always prompting him to stake 
everything on B. Therefore he tries to show him 
that it is infinitely more reasonable—even from 
the point of view of self-interest—to stake every- 


Tn saying this I am adopting Professor Chevalier’s view, 
which seems to me obviously true, that the ‘wager’ is in- 
tended to precede all discussions of evidence or arguments 
for religion. 


Faith and Reason oy 


thing on A. For, he says, if you stake all on B 
and A is the truth, you lose an eternal good: 
whereas, if you stake all on A and B is the truth, 
you lose only temporal pleasures which will soon 
pass. 

Refusal to face this issue is, in Pascal’s eyes, 
inexcusable. He will not indulge with toleration 
and sympathy those who ignore it. ‘““This neg- 
ligence in a matter which concerns their very 
selves, their eternity, their all, I find irritating 
rather than ‘touching.’’’?4_ Mere self-interest, he 
holds, should rouse us from such folly. What 
are the few unsatisfying pleasures of a selfish 
life during a few years compared with the fear- 
ful necessity they may entail of being annihilated 
or punished for ever? And he adds, “il n’y a 
rien de plus reél que cela, ni de plus terrible.’’ * 
*“There is nothing more real or more terrible than 
this.”’ 

But, in point of fact, how do many men 
argue with themselves? He describes what he 
believes to be a typical point of view, and makes 
an imaginary philosopher say: 

I do not know who put me in the world, 
or what the world is, or what I am; I am 


in a terrible ignorance of all things: I do 


4 “M'irrite plus qu’elle ne m’attendrit’’ (p. 417). 
PLA; 


32, 


Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


not know what my body is, or my senses, 
or my soul, or that part of me which is 
thinking what I am saying, which reflects 
on all things and on itself, and which knows 
itself no more than it knows the rest. | 
see these awful spaces of the universe which 
enclose me, and I find myself attached to a 
corner of this vast expanse without know- 
ing why I am placed in this place rather 
than in another, or why this short lifetime . 
of mine is given to me rather than to some- 
one else in the eternity which preceded me 
or that which follows me. I only see in- 
finities on all sides which enclose me as an 
atom and as a shadow, which lasts an in- 
stant and does not return. All that I know is 
that I must soon die and the thing of which 
I know least is that death, which I know not 
how to escape. 

As I know not whence I came or whither 
I go; so also I only know that on quitting 
this world I shall fall for ever either into 
nothingness or into the hands of an outraged 
God, without knowing which of these lots 
will be eternally mine. And yet from all 
this I conclude that I ought to pass all the 
days of my life without dreaming of making 
an investigation in regard to my destiny 
(sans songer a chercher ce qui doit m’arriv- 
er). Perhaps I might be able to clear up my 
doubts; but I do not want to take the 
trouble, nor take one step towards this in- 
vestigation; and, afterwards, while treat- 
ing with contempt those who shall devote 


Faith and Reason 33 


themselves to this labour, I intend to go 
forward without looking ahead or fearing, 
towards this great event, and allow my- 
self a soft passage to death, being uncer- 
tain as to the eternity of my future state.” 


And Pascal adds, “truly it is a glory to religion 
that it has such unreasoning men among its 
enemies.”’ * 

To Pascal, then, it is not merely morally but 
intellectually contemptible to wager on B, t.e. to 
refuse to admit a serious purpose in things. The 
mere common sense of self-interest should make 
us see that we really gain all by betting on A and 

lose all by betting on B. Moreover, is not the 
‘practical acceptance of B the very suicide of 
reason itself? 

From all this, then, we may conclude two 
things: (1) That it is legitimate and reasonable 
to devote at least as thorough a rational investi- 
gation to the problem of the purpose of life, that 
is, the problem of religion, as to any other sub- 
ject; and (2) that it is in the highest degree un- 
reasonable not to do so. 

That is why Pascal classes the serious enquirer 
with the sincere Christian for intellectual and 
moral dignity; for the one is seeking, and the 
other has found, “‘the light of life.” In this he 

*Pp, 418-419. *P, 419. 


34 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


is at one with St. Justin Martyr, St. Thomas, 
and the whole tradition of Catholic thought. 
But to which shall we ascribe his acceptance of 
this great first principle of a purpose in things—- 
to reasons of the head or of the heart? Surely 
to both at once.*® 


'(c) Reason and Conscience versus Imagination 


We may then (without danger to our faith in 
reason itself) admit the possibility of a moral 
element in the practical acceptance of first princi- 
ples as well as of truths which are beyond our 
reason. But is this element of the heart, or moral 
sense, to be found only in our perception of first 
principles and truths which are beyond reason? 
Surely not. It is often necessary to enlist it on the 
side of reason against imagination, in order to 
induce a true view of the evidence. Copernicus 
had to choose between reason and imagination 
in weighing the evidence for the theory that the 
earth goes round the sun, and not vice versa. 
reason said one thing, imagination another. 


16 The scholastic philosopher would maintain that the existence 
of a purpose in things is demonstrated from the order of the 
universe. Pascal does not deny this, but discusses how the ordi- 
nary man can be induced to a practical acknowledgment of this 
primary truth, 


Faith and Reason 35 


And this problem arises in regard to almost all 
the greater truths, owing to the fact that our im- 
agination is earth-bound and limited. There 
is therefore a moral element in the acceptance 
even of truths most rationally proved. Imagina- 
tion says one thing, reason another; and the 
heart or conscience must decide which it will 
obey. 

Let us take another instance. We read in the 
Gospel narratives, how Our Lord blamed the 
Apostles because they were afraid of hunger after 
they had twice seen him multiply fishes and 
loaves. The first experience of this miracle should 
have taught them something. But even after it 
they were sceptical and astonished at seeing Christ 
walking on the water. Why? “Because they un- 
derstood not concerning the loaves, for their 
heart was blinded’ (St. Mark vi. 52). So Our 
Lord performed the miracle a second time. Once 
should have been enough for the reason, but 
once was not enough for the imagination. There- 
fore Our Lord blames them as morally culpable 
when they complain, ‘“‘we have no bread.’ His 
words (if we may say so with all reverence) are 
characteristically stern: “Why do you reason 
because you have no bread? Do you not yet 
know or understand? Have you still your heart 


36 Catholic Chutch and the Appeal to Reason 


blinded? Having eyes, do you not see? and hav- 
ing ears do you not hear, nor remember? When 
I broke the five loaves among five thousand, how 
many baskets full of fragments did you take 
up?” They say to him “‘twelve.”’ “When also 
the seven loaves among four thousand, how 
many baskets?’’ ‘They answer “‘seven.’”’ ‘Then 
He says to them, “How do you not under- 
stand?’ (St. Mark viii. 16-21.) He appeals 
simply to their reason. He had proved Him- 
self master of the elements. It was therefore 
unreasonable on their part to fear in His pres- 
ence. It was imagination, not reason, which 
made them fear. 

Thus, normally, the reasons of the heart are 
supplementary to those of the head. At no time 
can they contradict them, because reason cannot 
gO against reason. 

But reason often demands the acceptance of 
truths which it cannot understand. Here also 
the imagination gets in our way and deceives 
us. It assures us, for instance, that we can 
understand the laws of nature because they ap- 
pear to follow a uniform course. But how (in 
the name of reason) can we be said to under- 
stand a thing when we only know its course and 
not its cause? We know that for the purpose 


Faith and Reason ah 


of our nafural existence we are obliged to ac- 
cept in practice such truths as the existence of 
an external world and our own power to investi- 
gate it reasonably. But, in doing so, we are really 
accepting truths which are quite beyond our 
reason. We only realise how true this is when 
Science presents us with truths which are not 
only beyond our reason but also beyond our 
imagination,’® as, of instance, when Sir Oliver 
Lodge contends that the atoms which compose 
an apparently solid block of marble are them- 
selves composed of electrons the spaces between 
which are really as much greater than those 
electrons as the spaces between the planets are 
greater than those planets.” If this is a truth 
of science it is equally a “mystery” of science. 
We bow our heads and make an act 
of faith. And it is thoroughly reasonable 
to do so. It is reason acknowledging truths 
which it cannot fully understand. But why is 
it that we make such an act of faith? Because 
first of all our very being (call it heart or head) 
demands the practical acceptance of certain first 
principles. [hen reason demands the accept- 


‘Non pas seulement incomprehensible mais inconcevable’’ 
(See Chevalier’s Pascal, p, 344). 

™See Sir Oliver Lodge, Modern Views on Matters (The 
Romanes Lecture, 1903), p. 8. 


38 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


ance of various conclusions from those first 
principles. We may be personally incapable 
of drawing these conclusions for ourselves, but 
we have a solid conviction that the scientific ex- 
pert could demonstrate them to the complete 
satisfaction of our reason. ‘The whole of 
science then is accepted by us as a system of 
truth because the exigencies of our being demand 
the acceptance of certain first principles, such as 
that things do exist. ‘Then reason does the rest. 
Similarly the whole of Catholic Theology is 
accepted by me because the exigencies of my very 
being demand the acceptance of certain first 
principles, such as that things have a purpose. 
Reason demands certain great deductions which 
follow immediately on the acceptance of a pur- 
pose in things. A purpose in things implies 
an end for which they exist. An End im- 
plies a Cause. A Cause cannot be less than its 
effects, e. g. the Cause of nature’s laws cannot 
really be subject to them; the Cause of my per- 
sonality cannot really have less of personality 
than I have. He can only have less of my 
limitations, etc. Or let us take another line of 
argument. A purpose in things implies a purpose 
in me, a purpose in my actions. Of course, mere 
logic cannot decide whether this purpose is 


Faith and Reason 39 


mechanical or moral. But in practice the 
exigencies of my very being demand belief in 
some degree of moral choice. Call it a reason 
of the heart or of the head, my power to choose 
whether I will write these words or not is for 
me an axiom. ‘Therefore a purpose in things 
implies a moral purpose in me because I have 
some power of choice. ‘Therefore it means a 
Moral Law, obedience to which is the fulfil- 
ment of the purpose for which I am made. I 
may be mistaken as to what is right or what 
is wrong. But I cannot doubt that there is a 
moral law. Its existence is involved in the 
two axioms, (1) that there is a purpose in 
things, and (2) that I have some degree of 
moral choice. 

But is there a real analogy between the ac- 
ceptance of these doctrines and the acceptance 
of the doctrines of experimental science? 

Let us put the two things side by side. The 
experimental scientist bases his investigations 
on the practical acceptance of certain first prin- 
ciples which cannot be formally proved. 
Among these are (1) the existence of things, 
(2) his freedom to investigate them, and (3) 
the validity of human reason. The religious 
philosopher (who is investigating the cause 


40 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


rather than the course of things) adds one more 
first principle: that things have a purpose. 
Each of them then proceeds to argue. (1) 
Each uses reason as far as it will go. (2) Each 
finds it necessary to postulate laws which are 
beyond reason because they are the only “laws’’ 
which cover the facts under discussion. Reason 
approves this act of faith even though imagi- 
nation boggles at it. And (3) each then can 
experimentally confirm the validity of these laws 
by testing their effects in particular cases. “These 
three processes, following on the acceptance of 
first principles, are the only possible mental pro- 
cesses for rational men, and the Catholic Church 
insists that they must be admitted in the sphere 
of religion. Failure to admit them has resulted, 
outside the Church, in that sceptical Pantheism 
which admits or denies truths according to its 
moods, thereby implying that nothing is really 
true or can be known as such. 

These three processes might be given three 
mottoes taken from the New Testament. The 
first is, after all, but an application of St. Peter’s 
injunction, that we should be able to give “a 
reason for the hope that is in us’”’ (I St. Peter iii. 
15). “The second, Our Lord’s own saying, “He 
that followeth Me walketh not in darkness but 


Faith and Reason 41 


hath the light of life...’ (St. John viii 
12); and, the third, Our Lord’s assurance that, 
“He that doth the works shall know of the 
doctrine whether it be of God’ (St. John vit. 
17). This last, of course, does not cover the 
whole field of possible experimental testing of 
the evidence for the faith. That testing may 
include for the man of to-day such things as (1) 
an historical investigation of whether Our Lord 
really did claim to be God, (2) an historical in- 
vestigation of whether the Church has ever con- 
tradicted herself in her definitions of faith, and 
(3) a purely scientific investigation of the pos- 
sibility of Our Lord’s miracles by an examination 
of the evidence for contemporary miracle. Pascal 
thought this of the highest value.** We can thus 
examine the hundreds of medical certificates re- 
lating to modern miracles at Lourdes; or (if we 
are doctors) make a personal examination of the 
cases there. Of course none of these three lines of 
investigation is necessary, but each must be ad- 
mitted as valid and permissible. “They are not 
necessary because, when once our reason has ar- 
rived at the conviction that only Christianity 
solves the problem of our existence and “covers 
the facts,’ we arrive by the assistance of God’s 


 Pensées et Opuscules, pp. 17, etc. 


42 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


grace at a certitude which does not require 
(though of course it does not preclude) further 
investigations. [hat is why Our Lord insists 
far more on a moral loyalty to the doctrines we 
have accepted, a loyalty shown by living up to 
them. “He that doth the works shall learn of 
the doctrine whether it be of God.” 

Of course, a man may come to the decision 
that we cannot admit such first principles as 
(a) a moral choice, or (b) a purpose in 
life. But in that case he will inevitably start 
his investigations with a bias against the very 
possibility of an historic Incarnation or of an 
historic Divine Revelation of any kind; and will 
not this bias affect his judgment of the evidence? 

We may sum up, then, in the words of St. 
Thomas Aquinas: ‘‘Belief,’’ he says, “is an act of 
the understanding adhering to Divine Truth,” 
though he adds that it is made “by command of 
the will’’ which, in its turn, is ““moved by the 
grace of God.”’ 

But Mr. Belloc reminds us that the modern 
“sceptical Pantheist” makes his appeal to Pascal. 
So to Pascal he shall go. 


PART II 
DIVINE AND HUMAN REASON 


(a) Man’s Problem and God’s Solution 


Pascal imagines himself saying to an agnostic 
friend, “‘One must admit that there is something 
astonishing about the Christian Religion.”” “To 
which his friend replies that he thinks so only 
because he was born in it. To this Pascal answers 
that, on the contrary, that fact would rather in- 
fluence him against it for fear of being unduly 
prejudiced in its favour. And yet he adds, “‘Al- 
though I was born in it I find it astonishing.’”’* 

What then does the mind of this “grand 
rationaliste’ (as M. Chevalier calls him) find 
most astonishing in Christianity? It appears to 
have been this: that Christianity explains man 
to himself. 

Let us consider his grounds for this assertion. 

According to Pascal all human interpretations 
of man’s life are based either upon man’s great 
ness or upon his misery. Only Christianity is 


oe. O00, 
43 


44 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


based on both at once. Let us see what this in- 
volves. All other religions or philosophies seek 
either the expansion and completion of man’s 
natural life or the extinction of it. “They either 
worship human life or fear it. “Their conception 
of a future state, for instance, is either a sublimer 
form of man’s present life or an escape from it: 
either some sort of Elysian Fields or some sort of 
Nirvana. 

This dilemma is found both in the highest and 
lowest forms of pagan philosophy. It is man’s 
potential greatness to which all forms of stoicism 
appeal; and this same appeal is found in the 
moral idealism of an Epictetus or a Marcus 
Aurelius. On the other hand, the misery of our 
human weakness is the basis of the mystical pes- 
simism which seeks a Nirvana or escape from life. 
Perhaps one might say that the idealism of the 
West tends to be optimistic, seeking the fulness 
of life; that of the East, to be pessimistic, the 
Western mind being predominantly active, the 
Eastern reflective and mystical, 

But the Western also may be pessimistic, 
only his pessimism will be less mystical. “This 
temper is seen in the philosophies which have 
dwelt on man’s weakness and limitations, as those 
of the later Epicureans, Cynics, Sceptics, and 


Divine and Human Reason 45 


Pyhrronists, and these are discussed by Pascal in 
the person of their great French disciple 
Montaigne. 

But Pascal’s theory can be extended and ap- 
plied to more modern controversies. When the 
popular thought of nineteenth-century Europe 
attempted to formulate a philosophy based on the 
discoveries and conclusions of Darwin, it erected 
instinctively two rival philosophies, both postu- 
lating a monistic and largely mechanical concep- 
tion of evolution. “These were a determinist Pes- 
simism and a determinist Optimism, based re- 
spectively on the misery and the greatness of man. 
The determinist atmosphere has so largely passed 
away that it is hard for us to realise how strong 
was its hold on the popular mind of the last 
generation. It was taken for granted among 
millions of our fellow men (1) that everything 
could be explained by natural laws, and (2) that, 
as these laws are unchangeable, everything is in- 
evitably predetermined: that nature is a blind 
machine of which we are parts. ‘This idea had 
to be applied to everything: to history, psych- 
ology, religion, morals, and even art. And the 
French, who applied it most vigorously and 
most completely, were the first to discover that 
it will not work. ‘The point at which it first 


46 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


broke down was the study of man in contem- 
porary works of fiction. Man had to be con- 
sidered as a mere creature of heredity and en- 
vironment, “un théoreme qui marche.’ His ac- 
tions were inevitable—the outcome of his natural 
inclination plus the influence of his environment. 
This type of novel in France and Russia was 
known as the “‘experimental novel’’ (a name 
which linked it with the fashionable worship of 
experimental science). Inevitably it was pes- 
simistic. If man is the creature of his inclina- 
tions he comes to disaster. It reflected the logical 
pessimism which has wrought such havoc in 
Russia and which still threatens France herself 
with ruin.’ 

But this pessimist evolutionary doctrine in 
France and Russia has hardly proved more 
dangerous to our civilisation than its optimistic 
counterpart in Germany. ‘The symbol of that 
philosophy is the Superman. ‘The popular phil- 
osophy in Germany, described by Professor 
Cramb and so many others, was a determinist 
optimism, just as in France and Russia it was a 
determinist pessimism. It was based on man’s 


*An admirable account of the pessimistic fiction of the 
experimental school and the reaction against it is given by M. 
Georges Fonsgrive in his Evolution des Idées dans la France 
Contemporaine. 


Divine and Human Reason 47. 


greatness, just as French determinism was based 
on his misery. It was justified by an appeal to 
the law of the survival of the fittest. Man was 
regarded as something essentially good in him- 
self, and therefore inevitably on the high road 
to perfection. A law of progress in the human 
species was postulated which is still popular. 

Man must therefore “realise himself,’’ express 
and develop and assert himself to the utmost. 
Again the result was undesirable both in private 
and public morals. Naturalism, whether it is 
optimist or pessimist, is fatal to man, and only 
Christianity can tell him why. Greek nature- 
wotship ended in a distortion of nature itself; 
German “‘culture,”’ in a destruction of much 
which we call civilization. Even the high moral 
idealism of Epictetus serves only to remind the 
ordinary man of his own weakness, and tempts 
him to despair. And the Hindu philosophy of 
an escape from life, though it may take really 
high and even holy forms, is equally liable to 
produce degeneration and reaction. 

All these philosophies assume that man’s 
present state, for good or ill, is a normal state. 
The Christian philosophy, on the other hand, 
rests on the assumption that man’s present state 
is abnormal. ‘The Catholic Church acts as a 


48 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


psychoanalist towards the human race, remind- 
ing it of something which it has almost wholly 
forgotten, and this is why its religion is able to 
“fit the facts’’ and solve the problem of life. 
Christianity tells us that the first man (Adam) 
received from God, along with his human nature, 
a supernatural life of conscious union with God 
Himself, a life whose whole tendency would have 
been towards God and would therefore have 
raised him above sin and suffering and death. 
But this life, being one of love, had to be ac- 
cepted by his free-will, choosing between self- 
love and the love of God. The Church tells us 
that in making his choice the first man acted on 
behalf of the entire human race, which is an or- 
ganic whole; that he actually chose self-love and 
thereby lost this God-ward supernatural life and 
was left as one among the other animals, though 
really a dethroned monarch and still possessed 
of an immortal soul and intelligence. (It may be 
well for a moment to recall the theological terms 
for these things that we may follow the argument 
more easily: The state of supernatural life is 
often called simply “‘super-nature’’ in contrast 
with “‘nature,”’ its loss is the Fall, the sin where- 
by it was lost is called “‘original sin.’’) 
‘There is then in man a twofold principle. 


Divine and Human Reason 49 


There is ‘‘nature,’’ of which the tendency 
since the Fall is towards self (by pride and lust) 
and therefore away from God, Who is the true 
centre of things: and there is also supernature, 
But nature is incomplete by itself and requires 
supernature to perfect it. A second principle 
however is found in man whereby his supernature 
is in process of restoration. And this restored 
supernature is called “‘grace.””’ “This restoration 
derives from God Himself who took our human 
nature, paying Himself the full penalty of its re- 
bellion and showing us how to pass with Him 
from death to life. St. Paul therefore sums it up 
when he says that “as in Adam all died, 
so in Christ all are made alive,’’ and it is 
reiterated by the Church in every age: 
“Christ died for all men,’ writes Pope 
Benedict XV (in his first Encyclical), ‘‘and 
there is no one who is excluded from the benefit 
of this redemption.”’ (It is a Jansenist error con- 
demned in the famous Bull Unigenitus to hold 
that there is ‘‘no grace outside the Church.’’) 

Let us however clear up a few points which are 
often misunderstood. Had the state of super- 
nature never been lost the Kingdom of God 
would have been realised among men in this 
present world. But Adam, like the angels and 


50 Catholic Chutch and the Appeal to Reason 


like ourselves, had to choose between living in a 
God-centred world and in a self-centred world 
and, like some of the angels and most of ourselves, 
he chose the latter and lost the privilege which we 
call the ‘‘supernatural life.’’ Still it is offered 
again to us by Christ and we have wills free to ac- 
cept or reject it. This short lifetime of ours will 
decide which shall be our choice: a God-centred 


eternity in heaven or a self-centred eternity in 
hell.® 


*TIt need hardly be added that this doctrine has nothing 
whatever to do with physical science, though it appears to 
constitute (in the eyes of writers like Bishop Barnes and Dean 
Inge) a condemnation of physical ‘‘evolution.’’ Even though 
we hold that both body and soul were affected by the loss of 
the supernatural life with which they had been endowed, this 
fact remains equally true. It is certainly probable that the 
human intellect was obscured by the diversion from a God- 
centred to a self-centred outlook. It is (in practice and 
in fact) strangely misled by the imagination. But to hold 
that nature itself has been distorted by the Fall is not involved 
in the Tridentine definition of faith (see the Council of Trent, 


5th, Session 1, in Denzinger). For a clear discussion of these 
points see Anthropology and the Fall by Humphrey Johnson 


(Blackwell, Oxford). 

There is perhaps one other point which we should make 
clear. The Catholic doctrine of the Fall does not imply the 
verbal historicity of the first three chapters of Genesis. But it 
does imply their historicity in so far as they proclaim the funda- 
mental principles of the organic unity of the human race and of 
the First Man’s headship thereof. The Church insists that 
our humanity is derived from Adam (not Eve), though this 
obviously does not imply a literal acceptation of the account 


Divine and Human Reason 51 


(b) Pascal’s Argument 


Let us then return to Pascal’s treatment of this 
fundamental Christian doctrine of two principles 
in man, nature, and grace, and see how he applies 
it to the interpretation of man’s life and the 
truth of Christianity. 

All other systems, he says, are based on one or 
other of these half-truths, the greatness of man 
or his misery. “The philosophies of pride, built 
upon man’s greatness, are not necessarily more 
spiritual, or those built upon his misery more 
-carnal. Whether taken as chiefly spirit or chiefly 
matter, man’s present state is treated as something 
normal, whereas it isin truth an anomaly. Any 
thought which fails to recognise this fails to 
give real happiness, because either (1) it builds 
On man’s greatness and then stumbles upon his 
misery, or (2) it builds on his misery and knows 
nothing of his true greatness. Pascal’s argument 
is admirably summarised in a passage of his 
given of how that humanity was conferred (namely, ‘‘God 
breathed on Adam and he became a living soul’). The es- 
sential point is that Adam is head of the human race and 
that our common humanity (including the humanity of the 
first woman) is derived from him. It is Adam’s sin which 
counts, not Eve’s. ‘Through one man sin came into the world’’ 


(Rom. v. 12). “As in Adam all died, so in Christ all are 
made alive’ (I Cor. v. 22). 


52 Catholic Chutch and the Appeal to Reason 


“Entretien avec M. de Saci,’’ in which he con- 
trasts the philosophies of Epictetus and 
Montaigne. 


I cannot deny that in reading [Mon- 
taigne|] and comparing him with Epictetus 
I have found that they were assuredly the 
most illustrious defenders of the two most 
celebrated schools of thought, and the only 
ones which are in accord in reason since one 
cannot help following one of these two 
roads in order to know whether (1) there 
is a God and therefore that man’s supreme 
sood is in Him, or (2) that it is uncertain 
and therefore the true good is uncertain 
since man is incapable of (attaining to) 
it. 058.5. [But he ‘continues: 

It seems to me that the source of the er- 
rors of these two schools is that of not hay- 
ing known that man’s present state differs 
from that of his creation: so that the one 
observing some traces of his first greatness 
and ignoring its corruption has treated 
human nature as healthy and without need 
of repair, which leads to the height of pride; 
whilst the other, perceiving his present 
misery and ignoring his first dignity, treats 
nature as necessarily weak and irreparable, 
which precipitates him into a despair of 
finding a true good, and thence into an ex- 
treme cowardice. . . . Thus it comes about 
from these two imperfect lights that the 
one, knowing man’s duties and ignoring 


Divine and Human Reason 59 


his helplessness, is lost in presumption, 
whilst the other, knowing his helplessness 
and not his duty, falls into cowardice, from 
which it should follow... that in 
putting them together one would form a 
perfect morality. But instead of this peace 
there would only result a war and general 
destruction ..,.. for the one establish- 
ing certitude and the other doubt, the one 
man’s greatness and the other his weakness, 
each destroys the truth as well as the falsity 
of the other. So they cannot endure separ- 
ately because of their defect, nor unite be- 
cause of their opposition, and thus they 
break and annihilate each other to make 
room for the Gospel. or [the Gospel] 
reconciles these contrarieties by a wholly 
divine art, and uniting all that is true and 
expelling all that is false it creates a truly 
heavenly wisdom, wherein these opposites, 
which are incompatible as human doctrines, 
are reconciled. And the reason is that the 
wise men of the world place the contraries 
in one and the same subject, and this cannot 
be; whereas the faith teaches us to put them 
in different subjects: all that is weak ap- 
pertaining to nature and all that is power- 
ful appertaining to grace.* This is the truly 
astonishing and new union which only God 
can teach, and He alone accomplish, and 
which is an image and effect of the ineffable 


* An exaggeration in the direction of Jansenism may be noticed 
here. But it does not affect Pascal’s general argument, 


54 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


union of the two natures in the one person 
of the God-Man.° 


(c) Divine and Human Faiths 


This passage from Pascal indicates with ad- 
mirable clearness the nature of the appeal which 
the divine reason embodied in the Church makes 
to the human reason of the individual man. St. 
John says that Christ is the Word (the Logos, or 
divine reason, wherein the half-truths of human 
wisdom can alone find their reconciliation). “To 
the Western lover of life Christianity says, “If 
you would gain your life you must first lose it,”’ 
but to the Eastern ascetic, “If you are really pre- 
pared to lose your life you shall also find it.” 
Christianity offers a new life and a new outlook 
which are supernatural. At first sight they ap- 
pear to go diametrically against the life and out- 
look of nature, and this fact is emphasised 
throughout the New Testament. But in the 
end they are seen to perfect and complete it. 
All that is true in Paganism is preserved and en- 
forced by the Church, for it is a part of that 
truth of which Christianity is the complete revel- 
ation. When Christianity came into the world it 
expressed itself naturally and easily in the 

° Pensées et Opuscules, pp. 159-160. 


Divine and Human Reason 55 


language of the civilisation in which it found 
itself, though it was violently at war with the 
principles of that civilisation. Roman law and 
Greek philosophy were “‘baptised’’ and used for 
the propagation of the Gospel. Local religious 
traditions had largely degenerated and given place 
to scepticism or mere superstition. “They could 
not stand before the internationalising process 
begun by the Roman Empire and which is still 
unfinished in our own time. Only a universal re- 
ligion could challenge the prevailing scepticism, 
and the worship of Christ soon became the only 
‘serious rival to the worship of Caesar. 

The philosophies which were supplanting the 
old cults found in the Church a rival as well as 
an ally. “Their language and modes of thought 
were used to express a system of thought which 
went far beyond them. It proclaimed with the 
stoics that religion is a life lived in union with 
the Word (Logos), but it regarded the Word 
as a personal Creator, not a mere immanent 
reason or soul of the world. It taught with 
Plato that man’s soul is immortal, but showed 
confidently how it could achieve its full expansion 
by mystical union with God. “This is eternal 
life that ye may know ... . the only God and 
Jesus Christ’”’ (St. John xvii. 3.). But while the 


56 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


Greek philosophy conceived God as immanent in 
creation Christianity added that He is both im- 
manent and transcendent. On the other hand, 
Christianity proclaimed that all creation is good 
—matter as well as spirit—and that it is only 
Vitiated by the Fall. Greek philosophy acknowl- 
edged the existence of the Word, but Christians 
proclaimed with confidence that the Word had 
been made flesh and even now dwelt among them. 
“He was in the world and the world was made 
by Him” (St. John i. 20). 

Man’s need of a living faith was temporarily 
supplied for some minds by the fashionable 
adaptation of Eastern mystery cults, some of 
which bear a superficial resemblance to Christi- 
anity. ‘hese cults were tolerant of one an- 
other. But as between them and the Church 
there was always war to the death; the Catholic 
Church was well aware of its own historical 
origins and believed them to be divine. “Thus 
she could unify all that was true in Greek and 
Roman religion and supply the divine life sought 
after by these Eastern forms of mysticism; not 
borrowing her doctrines from them but ex- 
pressing her own truths in their language. For 
all their truths were hers by right, since her 


Divine and Human. Reason D7, 


Founder was Himself “‘the Beginning which also 
speaketh with thee’ (St. John viii. 25). 

In morals, for instance, an easier standard had 
been allowed by Moses because of the hardness of 
men’s hearts: but Christ proclaimed that “from 
the beginning’ it was not so (St. Mark x. 6) 
and so it could not be admitted in His Church. 
All truth was hers because it was His. This real 
*““comprehensiveness’ of the exclusive Catholic 
Church was a favourite theme of Cardinal New- 
man. When reproached with the charge that 
Catholicism contained doctrines which were to 
be found in Paganism, he admitted the fact, but 
added that they were not taken from Paganism. 
It was popularly supposed in his time that the 
very doctrine of the Trinity was to be found 
outside Christianity. Newman replies that even 
were this the case it would not make it less 
Christian. Christianity contains all truth at 
least implicitly and only recognises in Paganism 
distorted fragments of its own teaching. He 
states the objection in a striking passage: 


The doctrine of a Trinity is found both 
in the East and in the West; so is the cere- 
mony of washing; so is the rite of sacrifice. 
The doctrine of a Divine Word is Platonic, 
The doctrine of an Incarnation is Indian; 


58 


Catholic Chutch and the ‘Appeal to Reason 


of a divine kingdom is Judaic; of angels 
and demons is Magian; the connection of 
sin with the body is Gnostic; celibacy is 
known to Bonze and Talapoin; a sacerdotal 
order is Egyptian; the idea of a new birth 
is Chinese and Eleusinian; belief in sacra- 
mental virtue is Pythagorean; and honours 
to the dead are a polytheism. 


He states the conclusion of the latitudinarian 


or agnostic: ““These things are in heathenism, 
therefore they are not Christian.” 


Then he proceeds in a characteristic way to 


show that all these facts can be readily admitted 
by one who takes the Christian view of the world 
—that these beliefs and rites are in truth Christ- 
ian, though foreshadowed in God’s Providence 
in heathenism. 


Scripture bears us out in saying that from 
the beginning the Moral Governor of the 
world scattered the seeds of truth far and 
wide over its extent: that these have vari- 
ously taken root, and grown up as in the 
wilderness, wild plants indeed, but living; 
and hence that, as the inferior animals have 
tokens of an immaterial principle in them, 
yet have not souls, so the philosophies and 
religions of men have their life in certain 
true ideas, though they are not directly 
divine. What man is amid the brute crea- 
tion, such is the Church among the schools 


Divine and Human Reason 59 


of the world; and as Adam gave names to 
the animals about him, so has the Church 
from the first looked round upon the earth, 
noting and visiting the doctrines she found 
there. She began in Chaldea, and then 
sojourned among the Canaanites, and went 
down into Egypt, and thence passed into 
Arabia, till she rested in her own land. Next 
she encountered the merchants of Tyre, and 
the wisdom of the East country, and the 
luxury of Sheba. ‘Then she was carried 
away to Babylon and wandered to the 
schools of Greece. And wherever she went, 
in trouble or in triumph, still she was a 
living spirit, the mind and voice of the Most 
High, “‘sitting in the midst of the doctors 
both hearing them and asking them 
questions,’ claiming to herself what they 
said rightly, correcting their errors, supply- 
ing their defects, completing their begin- 
nings, expanding their surmises, and thus 
gradually by means of them enlarging the 
range and refining the sense of her own 
teaching. So far then from her creed being 
of doubtful credit because it resembles for- 
eign theologies, we even hold that one 
special way in which Providence has im- 
parted divine knowledge to us has been by 
enabling her to draw and collect it together 
out of the world, and, in this sense, as in 
others, to “‘suck the milk of the Gentiles 
and to suck the breast of kings.’’® 


® Essays, vol. ii., p. 231; quoted also by Newman himself 
in ‘‘Essay on Development,” pp, 380-1. 


60 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 
SUPPLEMENT TO PART II 


NATURE AND SUPERNATURE 


The key to the paradoxes of Christianity is 
surely found in the doctrine of nature and grace. 
Grace completes nature; it does not destroy it. 
‘The so-called “‘natural’’ life of Paganism is really 
the life of nature left adrift without knowing its — 
true goal or how to attain it. It is really a 
life centred in ourselves, whereas the life of grace 
‘is centred in God, ‘This is the key to the endless 
paradoxes of the New Testament. A limited 
natural life has to be supplanted by a super- 
natural one. ‘The grain of wheat must fall into 
the ground and die (St. John xii. 24). Thus 
Christianity is a gospel of life, but he that 
would gain his life must lose it (St. Matt. x. 
39). Itis a gospel of love: yet, “he that loveth 
father and mother more than Me is not worthy 
of Me’ (St. Matt. x. 37), and we must be pre- 
pared, if necessary, to act as though we hated 
both father and mother, and our very life itself. 
It is a gospel of peace, yet Christ asks us: “think 
you I came to send peace upon the earth? 
I came not to send peace but the sword” (St. 


Matt. x. 34-35). And again in St. Luke (xii. 


Divine and Human Reason 61 


‘ 


51), He defines His message as ‘“‘not peace but 
division.” This great underlying paradox of 
Christianity, the loss of the merely natural, 
simultaneously with the acquisition of super- 
natural life is clearly defined by St. Paul. He 
can speak of the Christian as “‘crucified with 
Christ’ (Gal. ii. 20) and equally as “‘risen with 
Ghrse (Cole mi. Ly. Lhe \‘erace) of! Christ * 
delivers him from a “‘body of death’? (Rom. viii. 
24): “O wretched man that I am, who shall 
deliver me from this body of death?”’ 

“The flesh lusteth against the spirit’ (Gal. v. 
17), that is, the natural man dominated by the 
flesh against the supernatural. ‘This does not 
mean that spirit is good and flesh evil. ‘There 
ate spirits of wickedness, “‘principalities and 
powers.” (Eph. vi. 12). Moreover, Christianity 
has its message of salvation for the body as well as 
the soul. Our very bodies are “‘temples of God.”’ 
Therefore, “‘sanctify and bear God in your 
bodies” (I Cor. iii. 17). Moreover our bodies 
shall rise again. “‘But some men will say; how 
do the dead rise again? or with what manner of 
body shall they come? Senseless man, that which 
thou sowest is not quickened except it die first. 
And that which thou sowest thou sowest not the 
body, that shall be but bare grain as of wheat or 


62 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


of some of the rest. But God giveth it a body 
as He will; and to every seed its proper body. 
. - - SO also is the Resurrection of the dead. It 
is sown in corruption, it shall rise in incorruption. 
It is sown in dishonour, it shall rise in glory. It 
is sown in weakness, it shall rise in power. It is 
sown a natural body, it shall rise a spiritual 
body”’ (I Cor. xv. 35, etc.). 

Thus Christianity is a religion of life which 
tells us that we must die in order to live, a re- 
ligion of love which demands our willingness 
to be separated from all that we love most. It 
is a religion of faith, yet God “will render to 
every man according to his works’ (Rom. ii. 6). 
It is a religion of the spirit which insists on rever- 
ence for the body. ‘These great paradoxes which 
underlie the whole Christian teaching are 
summed up by our Lord’s words to Nicodemus 
in St. John’s Gospel: “‘Unless a man be born 
again he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God” 
(St. John iii. 3). Our whole life must be re- 
newed through a supernatural principle based 
upon a practical humiliation of self which 
acknowledges our nothingness by nature and our 
entire dependence on God’s grace. By grace all 
things are ours: “‘the world and life and death, 
things present and things to come, all are yours 


Divine and Human Reason 63 


and ye are Christ’s and Christ is God’s’”’ (I. Cor. 
ii. 22, 23). No wonder Pascal could say that, 
when once he had begun to understand Christi- 
anity his conquests in the world of science ap- 
peared mere “‘bagatelles.”’ 

‘The supernatural life demands a supernatural 
outlook. Pascal loved to quote Our Lord’s 
words to the blind man in St. John (ix. 39): 
“For judgment I am come into this word that 
they who see not may see; and they who see may 
become blind,’’ and he adds the comment that 
“they who see’ means those who think they see. 
‘Thus as St. Paul reminds us “‘the wisdom of this 
world is foolishness with God’’ (I Cor. iii. 19), 
just as the Gospel was “‘to the Greeks foolish- 
ness’ (I Cor, i. 23). But in reality ‘‘the fool- 
ishness of God is wiser than men and the weak- 
ness of God is stronger than men”’ (I Cor. i. 25). 

‘These doctrines underlie the whole of the New 
‘Testament. ‘They indicate the divine solution of 
man’s life. They build upon man’s nothing- 
ness and offer him the greatness which Adam re- 
jected through pride. This is why ‘God hath 
chosen the foolish things of this world to con- 
found the wise and the weak things to con- 
found the strong’’ (I Cor. i. 27). Our Lord says 
to us: ““Except you become as little children you 


64 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven’’ (St. 
Matt. xviii. 3), and He glories in this tremendous 
fact: “‘I thank Thee, Father, Lord of Heaven 
and earth, that Thou hast hid these things from 
the wise and prudent and revealed them to 
bapes sis s Moe wylath 1G MoM 

That then is the kind of appeal which the 
Gospel makes to the human intellect. Human 
reason must bow before the divine reason. “The 
whole of man must be “‘born again’’ and not 
least his understanding. St. Paul says his reason 
was “‘brought into captivity’’ to Christ. “Thus 
our human reason is offered sufficient evidence to 
make it perceive its own nothingness before the 
divine reason which completes and transcends it. 
Not that the truths of divine faith are against 
reason, though they often offend our imagina- 
tion. Our Lord is continually appealing to evi- 
dence, and therefore to reason, in support of His 
claims. But when once those claims are accepted 
we must bow our heads before His teaching and 
receive it as little children, though we cannot 
fully understand it. “Heaven and earth shall 
pass away, but my word shall not pass away” 
(St. Mark iii. 31). It is really an appeal from 
the wisdom of this passing world to that of a 
greater, where our soul and body shall find ful- 


Divine and Human Reason 65 


ness of life in “new heaven and a new earth” 
(II St. Peter itt, 13). ‘That fulness of life is 
really offered to us here on earth during our time 
of trial—it has been won for us by Christ. “In 
Me you may have peace. In the world you 
shall have tribulation, but fear not, I have over- 
come the world’ (St. John xvii. 33). So the 
Christian Saint can say, “I am crucified with 
Christ and I live; yet now not I but Christ liveth 
in me’ (Gal. ii. 20). 


PART. III 
THE GOD-MAN 
(a) Approaching the Evidence 


Before examining its historical evidence we 
have ventured to indicate, however inadequately, 
the kind of solution which Christianity offers 
to the problem of human life. Our reason for 
doing this is that to the ordinary non-Christian 
the very idea of the Incarnation is the wildest 
of absurdities, and his natural instinct is to ex- 
amine the New Testament with a presupposition 
against its more obvious meaning. ‘This pre- 
supposition in favour of a purely “‘natural’’ ex- 
planation of Christianity is so strong that the 
average critic, outside the Church, is practially 
sure of his conclusions before weighing the evi- 
dence. The word ‘obvious’ is applied by him 
to a method of interpretation which sometimes 
seems to strain the evidence almost beyond the 
breaking point and, what is yet more serious, 
deprives Christianity of all possible claims to be 

66 


The God-Man 67 


the solution of life or anything more than a 
vague sanction for respectable living. We have 
therefore ventured to indicate that there is a 
real problem of which Christianity is perhaps 
the solution, providing as it does an outlook 
which can unify and complete the chief ele- 
ments in man’s religious aspirations and satisfy 
his needs. The attempts to solve the problem of 
life through philosophy, mysticism, and ethics, 
as well as the craving of the human heart ex- 
pressed in revelation-myths and loving-saviour 
gods and rites and sacrifices: all these find their 
intellectual satisfaction in a system which is at 
once philosophical, mystical, and moral, and 
which has its roots firm in reason and history. 
The two great types of unification, monist and 
monotheist, find their completion and correc- 
tion in a theology which recognizes God as im- 
manent in nature and yet infinitely transcendent 
of it. The God of the Christians is at once in- 
finitely greater and far more near and familiar 
than any other deity imagined by men. ‘The 
Christian theology combines that belief in one 
great God and Creator which appears to have 
been the earliest expression of human religion 
with the craving for some kind of near personal 
saviour which is so common a feature of later 


68 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


types. Above all, it combines the two great 
moral interpretations of man’s life described by 
Pascal, the “‘real’’ view of his misery and the 
ideal’ view founded upon his greatness; and all 
this in a clear historic religion whose earliest 
characteristics were independence and intolerance 
of the world around it. ‘This religion clearly 
ascribes to a man living in a particular time and 
place the claim to be the infinite God who had 
taken human nature and become truly man. It 
proclaimed moreover from the first that this God- 
Man had died a criminal’s death. 

But, it is asked, is the insane probability of 
this religion really diminished by showing, as 
Pascal attempts to do, that, if it were true, it 
would satisfy the needs of man? Is not man 
himself too small and insignificant a thing to 
make the impossible a probability? 

This brings us back to a discussion of first 
principles. We admit that beside this colossal 
universe man appears infinitesimally small. But, 
then, before the universe of atoms he appears al- 
most infinitely great. He is a nothing before 
the universe, but he is himself a Universe before 
other and smaller things. Mere size is not the 
measure of greatness. What is the dignity of 
bulk compared with the intelligence which 


The God-Man 69 


measures it? “The problem of life exists only for 
man because he alone is possessed of intelligence. 
The earliest man known to us reflected, and 
neither mountains or beasts have ever shown the 
faintest disposition to do so. And this unique 
power of reflective intelligent activity is by far 
the greatest thing known to us. 

But perhaps the greatest difficulty in our con- 
ception of the Incarnation lies in the infinity 
of God rather than in the insignificance of man. 
God is lord of all the stars and planets. Why 
should He be concerned with this one? ‘The 
answer has been admirably expressed: ‘‘For other 
worlds God may have other words. For this 
world His Word is Christ.”’ 

Moreover, God is personal. He cannot have 
less of personality than I have; less of intelligence, 
life, will, and love. If our conception of Him 
is necessarily imperfect and anthropomorphic, it 
is at least the highest conception possible to our 
limited human minds, And if He would com- 
municate Himself lovingly to us, is not the In- 
carnation at once the simplest and most sublime 
manner in which He could do so? 

But, then, why this particular Jew who died 4 
criminal’s death two thousand years ago? Is 
it not an unworthy conception of God on earth? 


70 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


Should we not expect glory, majesty, dominion? 
That again depends on our conception of great- 
ness. If the highest thing known to us is rea- 
sonable action, should not the most perfect man 
be a man just perfectly good, a “‘faithful serv- 
ant’? Is it not the only worthy manifestation 
of God, the only thing which suits God? What 
could glory and empire, in the earthly sense, add 
to this? Did He not come precisely to save our 
nature from sin and from the two roots of sin, 
pride and luxury? Hiddenness, poverty, suffer- 
ing, death are surely the supreme remedy for the 
heart which is blinded by these. 

Moreover, He came in the full light of history 
at the time when the world was becoming unified 
as it had never been before; when local faiths 
with their half-truths were collapsing on all 
sides; when man had reached his limit of great- 
ness (and felt more than ever his own helpless- 
ness). And He showed that man’s only real 
misery is sin. He Himself bore all other suf- 
fering willingly in order to redeem us from 
sin. “No man taketh (My life) from Me, But 
I lay it down of Myself, and I have power to 
lay it down and I have power to take it up again” 
(St. John x. 18). He showed that the problem 
of sin and suffering are really one, for sin can 


The God-Man 71, 


be healed by suffering and sorrow itself can be 
turned into joy. Finally, He came of a race 
which had fought so long a fight for that mono- 
theistic doctrine which He was to justify and 
universalise. This was the race of the Jews of 
whom according to the flesh Christ came, ‘“Who 
is God over all things, blessed for ever’” (Rom. 
ix. 5). ‘To them He reveals God declaring that 
man can only know Him by revelation. “No 
man knoweth the Son but the Father, nor the 
Father but the Son and he to whom the Son 
shall have revealed Him” (St. Matt. xi. 27; St. 
Luke x. 22). Is there then sufficient reason to 
listen to His words? Have we sufficient grounds 
for believing in His existence in history or in His 
claims to our allegiance? What is this double 
revelation of the Son and of the Father which 
He claims to make, and how is it completed by 
the mission of the Holy Ghost and the founda- 
tion of His Church? In a word, what are the 
grounds of His “‘appeal to reason’’? 


(b) The Nature of the Evidence 


Before considering the message of the four 
Gospels, however, we should perhaps indicate the 
kind of evidence on which we accept them merely 


72 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


as human documents. Not that the Christian 
and Catholic faith depends upon them. It ex- 
isted before they were written. It was delivered 
orally. ‘The Church produced the Gospels, not 
vice versa. “The Church interprets them and is 
the guarantor of their inspiration. But we are 
concerned with them here merely as human docu- 
ments which confirm and illustrate the Church’s 
tradition regarding her Founder and her origin. 

The attack on the Gospels as historical docu- 
ments has usually been on internal or “‘higher- 
critical’ grounds, the grounds of “probability.” 
‘The rationalists of the eighteenth century rejected 
them because of their plainly supernatural out- 
look and clear teaching of the miraculous. This 
position has been modified in our own age. It 
is generally admitted that apparently miraculous 
phenomena do occur, but that these can be ex- 
plained by natural causes. “The modern mind is 
far more deeply offended by the detailed super- 
natural theology of the Fourth Gospel than by 
the miraculous records of the other three. The 
modern critic feels as fully bound as his grand- 
father to explain Christianity “‘naturally.’’ But 
to-day the “natural’’ is supposed to include all 
that was formerly regarded as supernatural; and. 
though it is often admitted that no satisfactory 


The God-Man 73 


natural explanation has been found, say, for 
the evidence of the Resurrection, it is confidently 
assumed that such an explanation may be taken 
for granted and will some day probably be es- 
tablished. Here, then, we will only recall the 
external evidence for the Gospels admitted by 
ak without discussing the speculations of higher 
critics. 

The man in the street is still troubled by the 
fact that the earliest Greek Codex of the Gospels 
dates only from the fourth century. But, then, 
the earlier MS, of Horace dates from the 
seventh century. The earliest Euripides dates 
from the thirteenth! The Christian Gospels are 
in a far stronger position than the classics and 
their generally authentic character is to-day dis- 
puted by no serious scholar. 

The earliest Christian literature known to us 
is scanty enough, But in the first seventy years of 
the Church we have Clement of Rome and 
Ignatius of Antioch who were clearly familiar 
with the whole of the New Testament. Papias 
of Hierapolis, the disciple of St. John, says that 
Mark, Peter’s interpreter, wrote down what Peter 
told him and that Matthew wrote the sayings of 
the Lord in Hebrew. Irenaeus speaks of four 


74 Catholic Chutch and the ‘Appeal to Reason 


gospels and Justin Martyr of ““Memoirs of the 
Apostles that are called gospels.’’ ! 

These writers of the second century took four 
gospels for granted, though heretics rejected some 
of these and chose others. St. Irenaeus however 
points to the witness of the heretics: in the first 
century St. Matthew is used by the Ebionites ad 
St. Mark by “those who separate Jesus and 
Christ.” 

Perhaps the most striking recognition of these 
four records is the Diatesseron of Tatian (a 
disciple of St. Justin Martyr, 160-190 A.D.). It 
is simply a harmony of the four Gospels and was 
used liturgically in the East. Moreover it is 
clear that the four Gospels known to us were 
often used and copied in the fifty or so Apocry- 
phal Gospels, twenty of which are known to us 
by fragments. “Ihe Gospels were carefully pre- 
served and early translated. ‘There is a Syrian 
text traceable (according to Professor Burkett) 
to about 150 A.D., while Tertullian (writing 
about 200 A.D.) speaks of an old Latin version. 
Moreover, none of these witnesses treats the 
Fourth Gospel as different in kind or in authority 
from the other three. 

The problem, then, of fixing their exact dates 
is mainly concerned with internal evidence. Here 


The God-Man 75 


we must refrain from touching on so vast a con- 
troversy. It would carry us beyond the scope 
of this little book.t “The dates most popularly 
ascribed to the New Testament documents to- 
day are probably those given by Professor 
Harnack.? This distinguished non-Catholic critic 
dates the Acts of the Apostles about 60 A.D. and 
certainly not later than 80 A.D. He attributes 
them to St. Luke. The ‘‘Acts’’ presuppose the 
composition of the Third Gospel, which itself 
presupposes the composition of St. Mark, and 
the Logia, or Sayings of Jesus, which he regards 
as the principle sources of our present St. Mat- 
thew.® He further ascribes the earliest of St. 
Paul’s epistles (to the Thessalonians) to about 
the year 49 A.D.; those to the Romans and Corin- 
thians before 54 A.D., and that to the Philippians 
between 57-59 A.D. 

Though he ascribes the Fourth Gospel to a 

Por a useful introduction to the whole subject we venture 
to recommend Dr. Felder’s Christ and the Critics, Vol. I (Eng- 
lish trans. Burns, Oates & Washbourne); also Dr, Arendzen’s 
The Gospels, Fact, Myth or Legend? (Sands). 

*See Harnack Die Chronologie der Altchristlichen Ltieratur 
bis Eusebius, I, II, C, I, (Leipzig, 1897, T.), p. 239, as well 
as the English translation of Luke the Physician. 

8 We are not venturing to discuss the relation of the Greek text 


of St. ‘Matthew which we possess with the original Hebrew 
Gospel ascribed to him by Papias. 


76 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


much later date, he describes it as an elucidated St. 
Matthew and adds: “If we have called St. John 
an elucidated St. Matthew because his aim also 
is didactic and apologetic, we may with equal 
justice call him an elucidated St. Mark and St. 
Luke, for he shares in the aims which dominate 
both these Evangelists. By means of the histori- 
cal narrative he strives, like St. Mark, to show 
that Jesus is the Son of God, and, like St. Luke, 
to prove that He is the Saviour of the world, in 
opposition to the unbelieving Jews and the dis- 
ciples of St. John the Baptist.’’* 

It is surely permissible, then, for the plaiti man 
to look at the bulk of the New Testament docu- 
ments as they stand and see for himself what 
picture they present. 

The difficulty for very many in doing this, 
however, is that they approach these documents 
with strong preconceptions. “The man who has 
never read the Gospels can often get a much 
fresher and clearer view of them than could the 
man who has heard them often and badly ex- 
pounded. For instance, the ordinary man who 
has heard sermons on Christ’s love for men 
(especially sermons of a vaguely evangelical 
type) ofteti carries away the impression that 


4 Luke the Physician (2nd ed.), p. 168, note. 


The God-Man 77 


meekness and mildness are all that can be seen 
in the Gospel picture of Our Lord, and he does 
not like (or understand) either meekness or mild- 
ness! An admirable antidote for such minds is 
afforded by a book like Mr. G. K. Chesterton’s 
The Everlasting Man. 

Mr. Chesterton has written few things more 
striking than the chapter in this book called ‘“The 
Riddles of the Gospel.’’ He imagines a reader 
who has never heard the Gospels interpreted and 
who views them for the first time. What is the 
picture which he finds in them? Is it that rep- 
resented by the devotion of the Church to a 
Saviour “meek and mild’? At first sight it ap- 
pears something very different. There is a 
mystical sense in which that picture is true. But 
that sense has been so distorted by popular senti- 
mentalism as to leave on the minds of those who 
do not read the Gospels for themselves the im- 
pression that Christ was a vague philanthropist 
who uttered platitudes about kindness. Very 
different surely is the first impression produced 
by a first serious reading of the Gospels them- 
selves, so different and so terrible that men prefer 
not to speak of it: 


There is something insupportable even 
to the imagination in the idea of turning 


78 


Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


the corner of a street or coming out into 
the spaces of a market-place to meet the 
petrifying glance of that figure as it turned 
upon a generation of vipers, or that face as 
it looked at the face of the hypocrite. “The 
Church can reasonably be justified therefore 
if she turns the most merciful face or aspect 
towards men; but it is certainly the most 
merciful aspect that she does turn. ... 
A man simply taking the words of the story 
as they stand would form quite another im- 
pression—an impression full of mystery 
and possibly of inconsistency; but certainly 
not merely an impression of mildness. It 
would be intensely interesting; but part of 
the interest would consist in its leaving a 
good deal to be guessed at or explained. It 
is full of sudden gestures evidently signifi- 
cant, except that we hardly know what 
they signify; of enigmatic silences; of iron- 
ical replies. “Ihe outbreaks of wrath, like 
storms above our atmosphere, do not seem 
to break out exactly where we should ex- 
pect them, but to follow some higher 
weather-chart of their own. The Peter 
whom popular Church teaching presents 
is very rightly the Peter to whom Christ 
said in forgiveness, ““Feed My lambs.’ He 
is not the Peter upon whom Christ turned 
as if he were the devil, crying in that obscure 
wrath, “‘Get thee behind me, Satan.’”’ Christ 
lamented with nothing but love and pity 
over Jerusalem which was to murder Him. 
We do not know what strange spiritual 


The God-Man 79 


atmosphere or spiritual insight led him to 
sink Bethsaida lower in the pit than Sodom. 
I am putting aside for the moment all 
question of doctrinal inference or exposi- 
tions, orthodox or otherwise; I am simply 
imagining the effect on a man’s mind if he 
did really . . . read the New Testament 
without reference to orthodoxy and even 
without reference to doctrine. 


How different is that picture from the popular 
conception of the ““humanitarian’’ Christ! How 
little did Our Lord ever say which was consistent 
with the popular modern idea of Christianity 
as a religion of pacifism, socialism, prohibition- 
ism, and the rest! How much did He say which 
is hopelessly inconsistent with it? Did he call 
on the Centurion to leave the army? Did he turn 
Wine into water? 


What torrents of effortless eloquence 
would have flowed from [modern critics] 
to swell any slight superiority on the part 
of Martha [over Mary]; what splendid 
sermons about the Joy of Service and the 
Gospel of Work and the World left Better 
than We Found It, and generally all the ten 
thousand platitudes that can be uttered in 
favour of taking trouble—by people who 
need take no trouble to utter them. If in 
Mary the mystic and child of love Christ 
was guarding the seed of something more 
subtle, who was likely to understand it at 


80 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


the time? Nobody else could have seen 
Clare and Catherine and Teresa shining 
above the little roof at Bethany. It is so 
in another way with that magnificent men- 
ace about bringing into the world a sword 
to sunder and divide. Nobody could have 
guessed then either how it could be ful- 
filled or how it could be justified. Indeed, 
some free-thinkers are still so simple as to 
fall into the trap and be shocked at a phrase 
so deliberately defiant. “They actually com- 
pate of the paradox for not being a plati- 
tude, 


There ate those who recognise the awful 
severity of the Christian moral code in regard to. 
mattiage and tell us that it is the morality of 
another age. Mr. Chesterton replies that it is 
rather the morality of another world: 


Christ in his view of marriage does not 
in the least suggest the conditions of Pales- 
tine in the first century . . . [His doctrine] 
was quite as difficult for people then as for 
people now. It was much more puzzling 
to people then than to people now. What- 
ever else is true, it is emphatically not true 
that the ideas of Jesus of Nazareth were 
suitable to His time but are no longer suit- 
able to our time. Exactly how suitable 
they were to His time is perhaps suggested 
by the end of His story. 


Mr. Chesterton maintains, then, thaf a man 


The God-Man 81 


reading the New Testament for the first time 
and without any of the presuppositions of mod- 
ern Liberal Protestantism would not get the im- 
pression of what is often meant by a human 
Christ: ‘“The merely human Christ is a made-up 
figure, a piece of artificial selection, like the merely 
evolutionary man. Moreover there have been 
too many of these human Christs found in the 
same story, just as there have been too many 
keys to mythology found in the same stories.” 
_ The pictures of Christ as a teacher of pacificism 
‘or of communism or of Christian Science or pro- 
hibition or that of a mad prophet with a Mes- 
sianic delusion are all equally unsatisfactory. 
Each is founded on a tiny fraction of the evi- 
dence. None of them really results from the 
evidence. Moreover, the vast majority of such 
human interpretations are in spite of the evidence. 
Each of these explanations is singularly inade- 
quate; and yet 
: taken together they do suggest something 
of the very mystery which they miss. “here 
must surely have been something not only 
mysterious but many-sided about Christ 
if so many smaller Christs can be carved 
out of Him. If the Christian Scientist is 


satisfied with Him as a spiritual healer and 
the Christian Socialist is satisfied with Him 


82 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


as a social reformer, so satisfied that they do 
not even expect Him to be anything else, it 
looks as if He really covered rather more 
ground than they could be expected to ex- 
pect. And it does seem to suggest that there 
might be more than they fancy in those 
other mysterious attributes of casting out 
devils or prophesying doom. 

Surely this whole chapter is what the Master 
of Balliol in a review of the book called it, “‘ad- 
mirable.””5> As Dr. Lindsay observes, ‘‘Mr. 
Chesterton is quite right in thinking that most of 
us are so used to the Gospels that we cannot read 
them with fresh eyes or realize the strange story 
they tell, and how unlike many things which 
Christ said are to the ordinary conceptions of 
Him. In that chapter on ‘““The Riddles of the 
Gospel’’ Mr. Chesterton really has succeeded in 
standing back and looking at the facts as though 
forthe first time. 4... 


‘(c) The Claims of Christ 


If it is not impertinent, however, we would 
suggest that Mr. Chesterton’s treatment of the 
Gospel picture would have been even more ef- 
fective if he had attempted to meet the most 


5“‘Mr. Chesterton looks at Mankind,” by the Master of 
Balliol. The Weekly Westminister, October 10, 1925. 


The God-Man 83 


popular of modern objections. The man in 
the street who depends vaguely on second-hand 
conclusions for his estimate of Christianity is still 
under the impression that if only St. John’s 
Gospel could be eliminated he could settle down 
comfortably to the belief that the Synoptic Gos- 
pels do give us a merely human Christ, and that, 
as Dr. Kirsopp Lake is at pains to inform us, 
“‘the Son of Man’”’ merely means “‘a man.”’ Chris- 
tians, of course, have always believed that Our 
Lord was fully man as well as fully God. As 
St. Thomas Aquinas says, ‘““The flesh of Christ 
was capable of suffering and death, and in con- 
sequence his soul was also capable of suffering 
. . . Lhere is no doubt that Christ really felt 
pain . . . He could feel real sadness . . . and 
fear,” though he adds that “‘these movements 
of the sensitive soul in Christ took place only 
according to the dictates of His reason and His 
reason could never be disturbed.’’ ‘The fact of 
Our Lord’s humanity is, of course, as fully 
recognised by St. John as by the Synoptists. But 
this is utterly different from the popular concep- 
tion of a merely “human Christ.’”’ Such a con- 
ception demands indeed an enormous struggle 
against the evidence, and can only be made even 
credible by dismissing much of the story in the 


84 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


Synoptic Gospels themselves on the grounds that 
it is absurd. For instance, all the critics admit 
that all the sources give us most plainly the story 
of the loaves and fishes. Dr. Sanday admitted 
that from a documentary point of view it was 
as well authenticated as any fact in history. 
But such a miracle is so obviously absurd to 
those who regard Christ only as a man that it 
need not trouble them. ‘The evidence is all one 
way, but the “obvious” conclusion is the other. 
This is but one instance out of so many. 
Again, the story of the forgiveness of St. Mary 
Magdalen as given by St. Luke obviously assumes 
that Our Lord claimed to be God: a debt to God 
was a debt to Himself. Simon the Pharisee was 
shocked because Our Lord allowed a notorious 
sinner to approach Him and kiss His feet and 
show other signs of love. Our Lord replies, 
“Simon, I] have somewhat to say to thee... . 
A certain creditor had two debtors, the one owed 
five hundred pence and the other fifty. And 
whereas they had not wherewith to pay he for- 
gave both, which therefore of the two loveth 
him most?’ Simon answered rightly, “‘I suppose 
he to whom he forgave most.’’ Our Lord replies 
by pointing again to Magdalen’s love and con- 
trasting it with Simon’s want of love, concluding, 


The God-Man 85, 


““To whom less is forgiven he loveth less’; and 
then to her, ““Thy sins are forgiven thee... 
thy faith hath made thee safe, go in peace.’’ And 
the Pharisees (who were later to rend their gar- 
ments at His “‘blasphemy’’) began to say within 
themselves, ““Who is this that forgiveth sins 
alsor’ (St, Luke vii. 37-50). The more we 
examine this story in St. Luke the more meaning- 
less it becomes if Christ did not claim to be God 
Himself. It throws, moreover, a yet clearer light 
on the claim to forgive sins as made in St. Mark 
(ii, 10). 

But, theri, Our Lord is always making such 
claims in the Synoptic Gospels. He speaks with 
“authority” (St. Mark i. 22) in His own name, 
not in the name of another. He claims to be 
sreater ther Jonas or Solomon or even the 
Temple itself (St. Matt. xii.). He is Lord of 
the Sabbath (St. Mark ii. 28; St. Matt. xii. 8), 
He is Master of the angels, to whom the Jews 
attributed so high a dignity (St. Matt. xiii, 41). 
He claims to develop the moral law given by God 
Himself (St. Matt. v. 21-22). He will judge 
the world (St. Matt. xvi. 27). He controls 
not only the elements of nature but even the 
devils in His own name, and allows others to 
cast them out in His name. Where two or three 


86 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


are gathered together He will be in the midst (St. 
Matt. xviii. 20). No man may love father or 
mother more than Him (St. Matt. x. 37). He 
claims to satisfy the human heart, “‘Come unto 
Me’”’ (St. Matt. xi. 28). He would have gath- 
ered Jerusalem as a hen gathers her “chickens.” 
In the parable He treats the Prophets as God's 
servants, but Himself as the natural heir of the 
Master of the Vineyard (St. Matt. xxi. 27-40). 
He tells us that He saw Satan fall like lightning 
from heaven (St. Luke x. 18). He is David’s 
Son indeed; but He is also David’s Lord (St. 
Mark xii. 35-37). He is a victim but a will- 
ing victim: ““Thinkest thou that I cannot ask 
my Father and He will presently give me more 
than twelve legions of angels?’ (St. Matt. xxvi. 
53). Heaven and earth shall pass away but His 
word shall not pass away (St. Mark xiii. 31). 
He is put to death for the reiteration of His 
“blasphemous” claims. But He cannot be ex- 
plained or even understood as one man is under- 
stood by another. “‘All things are delivered to 
Me by the Father. And no one knoweth the 
Son but the Father: neither doth anyone know 
the Father but the Son and he to whom it shall 
please the Son to reveal Him’’ (St. Matt. xi. 27; 


The God-Man 87 


St. Luke x. 22)... What evidence is left for the 
merely human Christ? 

Is there after all any essential difference be- 
tween these claims and those made in the Fourth 
Gospel? He who was David’s Lord and who 
saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven could 
surely say, “before Abraham was, I am’’ (St. 
John viii. 58), and could elucidate His claims 
by calling Himself “‘the Beginning, which also 
speaketh with Thee’ (St. John viii. 25). He 
who was Lord of angels and devils, who could 
walk upon the sea, who promised that He would 
judge the world and who, finally, claimed to 
share God’s incomprehensible nature (St. Luke 
x.; St. Matt. xi.) can hardly surprise us when He 
says, ““Ihe Father and I are one thing’ (St. 
John x. 30), and, “He that seeth Me seeth the 
Father also’ (St. John xii. 45). He who said in 
the garden, “Think you not that I could ask 
My Father and He would give me more than 
twelve legions of angels,’ could surely say, “‘T 
lay down My life for My sheep: no man taketh 
it from Me. But I lay it down of Myself and 
I have power to lay it down and I have power 
to take it up again’ (St. John x. 15-18). He 
for whom the sins of the Magdalen were a 
debt to Himself which He himself had power to 


88 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


remit could surely read the heart of the Samari- 
tan. He who could say, “Come unto Me all ye 
who labour’ (St. Matt. xi. 28), could surely 
say, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” 
(St. John xiv. 6). Surely Harnack is right 
when he says that the Fourth Gospel is only an 
elucidation of the other three. 

Of course, there is the passage which to most 
men is the supreme difficulty: ““My God, My God, 
why hast Thou forsaken Me?’’ (St. Matt. xxvii. 
46). But, when we remember that the whole 
Christian contention rests on the doctrine that, 
as Man, Christ bore the fulness of suffering and 
that to the spiritual mind this abandonment or 
“dark night’ is by far the most real form of 
suffering, we should surely expect that He would 
endure it. Moreover, if we complete the pro- 
phetic psalm from which it comes (and which 
Our Lord may well have been reciting during 
those last hours) we see that it contains the pro- 
phecy of His triumph as well as of His derelic- 
tion. It describes His sufferings indeed: ‘“They 
pierced my hands and my feet . . . they look 
and stare upon me... . they part my garments 
among them and cast lots upon my vesture’’; 
but it goes on to say, “‘My praise shall be of Thee 
in a great congregation . .. all the ends of the 


The God-Man 89 


earth shall remember and turn unto the Lord.” 
« « « Lhey shall come and declare His righteous- 
ness unto a people that shall be born, etc.’”’ (A. V. 
Psalms xxii.). This note of triumph marks all 
the prophecies, whether Our Lord’s own descrip- 
tion of His passion and resurrection or the great 
passages of the Old Testament. But the fulness 
of suffering had first to be endured. 

Such words of His had to be appealed to by 
the Church against the heretics who could not be- 
lieve that Our Lord was truly human as well as 
truly divine. Yet His humanity is quite as much 
insisted upon in St. John and in St. Paul as in 
the Synoptic Gospels, and nobody doubts that 
St. John believed that Christ was God, ‘“‘the 
Word was God... all things were made by 
Him , .. and the Word was made flesh and 
dwelt amongst us’ (St. John i.), or St. Paul 
who called Him ‘‘God over all things, blessed 
for ever’? (Rom. ix. 5). ‘Yet the true nature of 
this doctrine of a divine Person who was also 
truly man is obviously beyond our understand- 
ing. We accept it as true because it is revealed 
to us by an authority in which we can 
reasonably trust. “No man knoweth the 
Son but the Father and no man know- 


90 Catholic Church and the ‘Appeal to Reason 


eth the Father but the Son and he to whom 
the Son should have revealed Him.’’ (St. Luke x.; 
St. Matt. xi.). It is Christ who reveals both 
Himself and the Father. 

Aut Deus aut non bonus. Mr. Chesterton 
uses this old Augustinian argument which no 
modern psychological theory can really affect: 
Christ clearly claimed to be God as well as man. 
Therefore He was deluded or wicked if He was 
not God. Megalomania is however the last 
thing which commonly goes with an exquisite 
delicacy and balance of mind like His. More- 
over, Christ’s insistence on His comparative noth- 
ingness as man is quite as striking as His in- 
sistence on His own God-Head: “‘If I glorify My- 
self, My honour is nothing,” etc. (St. John viii. 
54). But the supreme justification of His claims, 
the ground of His appeal to reason is twofold: 
(1) The fact of the resurrection which he fore- 
told, and (2) the impression He made upon the 
disciples and upon mankind. We will for a 
moment, then, consider these. 


®Mr. Chesterton is rightly impatient of those who would 
ascribe to Our Lord merely some higher degree of a “‘divinity”’ 
attributed to all men. ‘“‘It were better,’’ he writes, “to rend our 
robes with a great cry like Caiaphas in the judgment . . . than 
to stand stupidly debating fine shades of pantheism in the 
presence of so catastrophic a claim.” 


The God-Man 9] 


(d) The Gospel of the Resurrection 


It has been said that without the resurrection 
Christianity would have been an event more 
miraculous than the resurrection itself. Its almost 
incredibly rapid spread throughout the Roman 
world, into Spain and Italy, and soon after into 
Gaul and Germany, in spite of every obstacle, 
can only be described as an explosion of human 
energy. And all this was inspired by a belief 
that Jesus Christ had proved His claims to God- 
Head by rising from the tomb. 

In the very year of Our Lord’s death (accord- 
ing to Harnack) St. Stephen cries aloud, “‘I see 
the heavens open and the Son of Man sitting 
on the right hand of God.’ ‘Then the Jews, 
“crying out with a loud voice stopped their ears 
and with one accord ran violently upon him. 
And casting him forth without the city, they 
stoned him, and the witnesses laid their garments 
at the feet of a young man whose name was 
Saul. And they stoned Stephen, invoking and 
saying, ‘Lord Jesus receive my spirit’’ (Acts vii. 
55-60). A new spirit had entered into the dis- 
ciple and into their leader who had once denied 
Christ. 

The disciples necessarily concerned themselves 


92 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


with proving Our Lord to be Messiah before 
they could convince the world of His divinity. 
Yet even in doing this they call Him as a matter 
of course “‘the Prince of Life’ (Acts ii. 31-36). 
‘They preach his resurrection as a proof that Me 
is “both Lord and Christ’’ (Acts ii. 31-36). 
‘There is no opposition among the Christians to 
the expressions used, by St. Paul when he says: 


[that God] hath delivered us from the 
power of darkness and hath translated us 
into the kingdom of the Son of His love, 
in whom we have redemption through His 
blood, the remission of sins: Who is the 
image of the invisible God, the first-born 
of every ‘creature: for in Him were all things 
created in heaven and on earth, visible and 
invisible, whether thrones or dominations, 
of principalities or powers: all things were 
created by Him and in Him: and He is 
before all and by Him all things consist. 
And He is head of the body, the Church 
who is the beginning, the first-born from 
the dead: that in all things He may hold the 
primacy: because in Him it hath pleased 
the Father that all fulness should dwell: 
and through Him to reconcile all things to 
Himself, making peace through the blood of 
His cross, both as for the things that are on 
earth and the things that are in heaven” 
(Col. i. 13-20). 


But as much of modern destructive criticism 


The God-Man 93 


would regard Paul and not Christ as the founder 
of Catholicism let us turn to other witnesses. In 
the Acts we find it preached that “‘there is none 
other name under heaven given among men 
whereby we must be saved’ (Acts iv. 12). 
Christ is not merely a holy man but He is “‘the 
Holy One,”’ the Just, the Prince of Life (Acts iii. 
14-15). Heis “Judge of the quick and the dead”’ 
(x. 42). He gives “repentance and forgiveness 
of sins’ (v.31). He enjoys with God the title 
of Lord (iv. 33, v. 9-14). He is exalted by the 
right hand of God and enjoys with Him both 
power and dominion (ii. 35, vii. 58-59). 

The New Testament and especially St. Paul 
‘(like the Church of all the ages) is filled with the 
praise of Christ as man: the second Adam who 
leads mankind back to God. St. Peter speaks of 
Him as “‘on the right hand of God swallowing 
down death that we might be made heirs of life 
everlasting, being gone into heaven, the angels 
and powers and virtues being made subject to 
Him” (I St. Peter iii, 22). (This is a typical 
passage, 

Of our “‘lively hope’ (our redemption through 
the God-Man) the resurrection is the supreme 
witness (I St. Peter 1. 3). We may be excused 


94 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


then from quoting at length St. Paul’s exposi- 
tion of this gospel of the risen Christ: 


I delivered unto you first of all, which I 
also received: How that Christ died for our 
sins according to the Scriptures: and that He 
was buried, and that He rose again the third 
day according to the Scriptures: and that He 
was seen by Cephas; and after that by the 
eleven. “Then was He seen by more than 
five hundred brethren at once; of whom 
many remain until this present, and some 
are fallen asleep. After that, He was seen 
by James, then by all the Apostles. And 
last of all He was seen by me, as by one 
born out of due time. . ... .. Now if Christ 
be preached that He rose again from the 
dead, how do some among you say that 
there is no resurrection of the dead? But 
if there be no resurrection of the dead, then 
Christ is not risen again. And if Christ be 
not risen again, then is our preaching vain, 
and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are 
found false witnesses of God, because we 
have given testimony against God, that He 
hath raised up Christ; Whom He hath not 
raised up if the dead rise not again. For 
if the dead rise not again, neither is Christ 
risen again. And if Christ be not risen 
again, your faith is vain, for you are yet 
in your sins. . . . But now Christ is risen 
from the dead, the first-fruits of them that 
sleep. For by a man came death, and by a 
man the resurrection of the dead. And as 


The God-Man 95 
in Adam all died, so also in Christ all shall 


be made alive. But everyone in his own 
order: the first-fruits Christ, then they that 
ate of Christ, who have believed in His 
coming. Afterwards the end, when ‘He 
shall have delivered up the kingdom to God 
and the Father, when He shall have brought 
to nought all principality, and power, and 
virtue. For He must reign, until He hath 
put all His enemies under His feet. And the 
enemy death shall be destroyed last, for He 
hath put all things under His feet. And 
whereas He saith, all things are put under 
Him, undoubtedly he is excepted who put 
all things under Him. And when all things 
shall be subdued unto Him, then the Son 
Himself shall be subject unto Him that put 
all things under Him, that God may be all 
in all (1 Cor. xv.). 


For St. Paul everything depends on the resur- 
rection, and the resurrection is proved by a great 
body of evidence to which he appeals. His testi- 
mony is, with slight additions, a summary of 
the evidence given in the four Gospels. No one 
at the time questioned this evidence or his ap- 
peal to witnesses still living, although the be- 
lievers had to suffer persecution for accepting it. 

But why is the fact of the resurrection of such 
capital importance? Because Christ Himself had 
so often appealed to it. It was therefore the 
justification of His claims as God, as well as of 


96 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


His humiliation and acceptance of the fulness 
of human misery. And yet it came as a surprise, 
a shock to the imagination. ‘The Apostles are 
unconvinced by the narrative of the holy women 
and Our Lord had to convince them Himself by 
showing them His pierced hands and feet (St. 
Luke xxiv. 39) and by eating the fish with them 
(( St. Luke xxiv. 42). The slight apparent dis- 
crepancies in the narrative only add to their value 
as independent testimonies. We have at least 
three different sources: the holy women, the 
twelve Apostles, the two disciples on the way to 
Emmaus, as well as the five hundred alluded to 
by St. Paul. “The Romans and Jews have to offer 
an explanation of the undoubted fact of the 
empty tomb, and their explanation, that the 
disciples stole the body, is a clumsy one. This is 
still the best explanation offered to account for 
the empty tomb. ‘The eighteenth century, how-~ 
ever, substituted the suggestion that Our Lord 
had not died but only swooned (Paulus, Hase, 
etc.). 

The modern method of explaining the rest of 
the story on grounds of hallucination still de- 
mands somé special treatment of the difficulty 
presented by the empty tomb. According to 
Loisy, Our Lord was never buried: the body was 


The God-Man 97 


thrown into a ditch with the bodies of other 
criminals. Dr. Kirsopp Lake thinks that the 
disciples mistook the tomb. None of these 
theories is really satisfactory, for two reasons: 
(1) They fail really to account for the kind of 
effect produced by the evidence at the time and 
since. ‘hey are ingenious attempts to eliminate 
the supernatural belonging rather to the natural 
bias of our imagination than to reason; and (2), 
to the theist who does believe that Christianity 
has produced great and beneficent spiritual effects, 
' they suggest that Divine Providence made use of 
a gigantic fraud to produce these spiritual effects. 
In other words, they attribute to God a doctrine 
which our grandfathers attributed to the Society 
of Jesus, namely, that the end justifies the means! 

We admit with Canon Streeter that, other 
things being equal, a natural explanation must al- 
ways be sought before the admission of a super- 
natural one. But we cannot agree with the con- 
clusion he draws. He admits that no ‘‘definite 
suggestion” (fora natural explanation of the evi- 
dence for the resurrection) “‘has any claim to be 
regarded as in ITSELF particularly probable, 
but where a natural explanation of an event is 
at all possible there must be very special reasons 
for falling back upon an explanation of a super- 


98 Catholic Church and the ‘Appeal to Reason 


natural character.’”’7 ‘The Canon pleads for “‘a 
little ingenuity’ in finding such an explanation. 
But do not the consistently supernatural char- 
acter of the Christian religion itself, the promises 
of Christ, and the very character of the resurrec- 
tion as the supreme disproof of mere naturalism 
constitute “‘very special reasons’’ for accepting 
such overwhelming evidence? 

‘The Fourth Gospel records how St. Thomas 
was unwilling to accept any other evidence than 
that of sight and touch, a kind of test which could 
not possibly be applied to historical evidence. 
The testimony of the twelve might suffice for 
reason but did not satisfy the imagination. Sight 
and touch were accorded him by his risen Lord, 
but with rebuke, ‘“‘because thou hast seen, 
Thomas, thou hast believed; blessed are they that 
have not seen and have believed’ (St. John xx. 
20). 

Belief on such evidence is then a reasonable acf, 
however much it may disturb the imagination; 
and the Church in all ages has replied with 
Thomas: ‘‘“My Lord and my God.” The whole 
Catholic conception of the sanctity of the body 
which shares Christ’s risen life in the Holy 
Eucharist is built upon the fact that He is risen 


* Foundations, pp. 134, 140. 


The God-Man 99 


from the tomb. To millions in every age the 
fact of the empty tomb is (as Harnack has 
pointed out) the pledge of personal immortality. 
Do not these things constitute “‘very special rea- 
sons” for accepting such evidence? 


PART IV 
THE MIND OF THE CHURCH 


The history of the Church should rightly be 
called the history of Truth,’’ wrote Pascal.? 

As we have seen, he regarded Christianity as 
the divine wisdom wherein alone the half-truths 
of human wisdom could find their reconciliation. 
The history of the Church is, then, the history 
of the relations between this divine and human 
wisdom, between the mind of Christ and the 
mind of the world. ‘The Church says with St. 
Paul, ‘“‘we have the mind of Christ’ (I Cor. ii. 
16). And the whole history of the Church has 
been a resistance to those who would “divide 
Christ.’* Almost all the greater heresies are at- 
tempts to do this. ‘They are built (in accordance 
with Pascal’s law) either on the greatness or on 
the misery of man. ‘There are first the heresies 
in regard to the Person of Christ. Some in 
denying His God-Head would exalt Him as the 
supreme type of human greatness, the proof of 


Pes Pep 
100 


The Mind of the Church 101 


man’s moral dignity; others would deny His true 
humanity and cast the misery of our nature at 
His feet as God and Saviour. And, similarly, 
some would insist, like the Pelagians, on the 
dignity of the human will, minimising the effects 
of the Fall and the need of grace, whilst others 
would despair of man’s moral capabilities and 
cast all hope on God and on our predestination 
through His grace. Against all these the Church 
protests by reafirmations and fuller definitions 
of her traditional doctrines. 

Moreover, the same may be said of systems 
which exalt spirit to the detriment of matter or 
matter to the detriment of spirit, of philosophies 
which exalt tradition and deny reason on the one 
hand and those which treat reason as all-sufficing 
on the other. ‘Traditionalism and rationalism 
are equally condemned in order to preserve both 
reason and tradition. As Mr. Chesterton has ad- 
mirably expressed it, the condemnation of a 
heresy is always the protection of a larger liberty. 

But this whole conception rests on belief in a 
visible Teaching Church with power to speak 
with Christ’s authority, Have Catholics any rea- 
sonable ground for belief in the existence of 
such a teaching authority in the world to-day? 
To many a Catholic the Church herself is the 


102 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


supreme argument for the truth of Christianity, 
and indeed for the existence of a God of right- 
eousness. In a world which, in its effect on the 
imagination, seems to give the lie to these great 
truths, the Church stands as “‘the concrete repre- 
sentative of things invisible.’’? 

This little book has been an attempt to show 
the lines along which the Catholic Church makes 
her appeal to reason. In Part I, it was urged 
that faith in truths which are beyond reason may 
be a thoroughly reasonable act. In Part II, the 
possibility of a reasonable faith in the unique 
claim of Christianity as a doctrine of life was 
considered. In Part III, the reader was reminded 
that the available evidence is for and not against 
the traditional interpretation of the Gospel. In 
this chapter it may be well to consider certain 
principles of Catholicism which are often mis- 
understood or overlooked in contemporary dis- 
cussions. 

The first of these is the principle of doctrinal 
authority in the Catholic Church. For instance, 
critics of the Church often draw analogies—fa- 

2'The phrase is Newman’s, But the normal Catholic sense 
of the ‘‘obviousness’’ of the Church is expressed by Pascal 
when he says, “‘It is impossible that those who love God with all 


their heart should misunderstand the Church, which is so evi- 
dent’”’ (p. 724). 


The Mind of the Church 103, 


vourable or unfavourable—between the consti- 
tution of the Church and that of various secular 
states. Such analogies seem to me fundamentally 
unsatisfactory, since the primary claim of the 
Church to witness to a supernatural life and to 
the unchanging truths on which that life de- 
pends is clearly of a different nature from the 
aim and object of any secular state. “The whole 
Catholic position rests on belief in a living 
Church which is infallible in her teaching be- 
cause founded by the God-Man. 

This does not, of course, imply that the indi- 
vidual Catholic or even the Pope, pretends to be 
able to comprehend the mind of God. In the 
words of Pope Pius IX, ‘‘Far be it from us that 
we should wish to sound the hidden counsels 
and judgments of God, which are deep abysses 
that cannot be fathomed by human thought.” 
(Allocution, December 9th, 1854). And the 
late Pope, in his first encyclical, condemned those 
who “‘have reached such a degree of rashness as 
not to hesitate to measure by the standard of their 
own mind even the hidden things of God and all 
that God has revealed to men.’’ Nor does this 
contradict the assertion of Pius X that “‘faith is 
a true assent of the intelligence to truth.”’ Faith 


104 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


is not against reason, but reason is limited and 
is incomplete without faith. 

Let me quote a paragraph from a distinguished 
Catholic theologian, Father Cuthbert, O.S.F.C., 
on the central idea of Catholicism and its char- 
acter as a revelation: 


The conception of Christianity as directly 
of supernatural origin and character is 
fundamental to the Catholic position. “The 
Christian revelation is not and never could 
be derived from .the operation of man’s 
own reason. The most complete content of 
human reason left to itself is circumscribed 
by the created finite world in which our 
natural existence lies: and the Christian 
revelation carries us beyond that into the 
higher life of conscious union with God 
Himself, In this supernatural life, there is 
a transformation of values both as regards 
ourselves and the world in which we live, 
a transformation brought about by the di- 
rect operation of the Divine Spirit through 
Jesus Christ. Christ as the Divine Word 
is the giver of this new life to us; we are 
and ever shall be merely recipients. The 
centre and source of this new life is always 
outside ourselves in Christ the manifested 
Word of God to man. If, then, we seek 
for the sufficient reason and guide to this 
higher life, we find it not in ourselves but 
in Christ alone, and our ultimate salvation 
lies not in the fuller or fullest realisation 


The Mind of the Church 105 


of our natural self but in the apprehension 
of the life which is in Christ. 

[But] it is indeed the case that as we re- 
ceive the truth from Christ, our reason will 
be informed by it and become one with it: 
and this truth will manifest itself more and 
more in terms of our own reason; yet al- 
Ways our reason will remain dependent for 
its knowledge upon the revealing life of 
Christ in whom alone this truth is revealed 
in an absolute sense; Christ being Himself 
the Truth, the Way and the Life.? 


This Truth, revealed in Christ, is apprehended 
by the mind of the Church. Different elements 
in it will doubtless appeal more forcibly to differ- 
ent individual minds, Thus St. Paul emphasizes 
certain doctrines more forcibly than does St. 
John. But the truths apprehended are not mere 
subjective impressions. ‘They are themselves as 
unchangeable as the truths of Euclid. 

Newman has expressed this point in an inter- 
esting paragraph: 

“The idea which represents an object or sup- 
posed object is commensurate with the sum total 
of its possible aspects, however they may vary in 
the separate consciousness of individuals; and 
in proportion to the variety of aspects under 


8 The Principle of Authority, pp. 3-4. 


106 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


which it presents itself to various minds is its 
force and depth and the argument for its reality’’ 
Thus those unchangeable revealed truths 
which are realised by the mind of the Church 
will gradually be apprehended with greater ful- 
ness till an entire theology is developed. Indi- 
viduals will apply them to further problems and 
draw from them further deductions. If such 
applications and deductions are legitimate they 
will preserve the original idea and merely apply 
it further. If they are illegitimate they will con- 
tradict and ultimately destroy the original idea. 
These false deductions are called “‘heresies.”’ 
Now, whenever such false deductions become 
popular, the Church must have the power to 
make a further and more comprehensive defini- 
tion of its original tradition—comprehensive 
enough to exclude the new heretical deduction. 
These definitions seem something like hair- 
splitting to the outsider. “Thus we read in 
Froude’s biography how in earlier years 
Carlyle had spoken contemptuously of the 
Athanasian controversy, of the Christian world 
torn in pieces over a diphthong, and he would 
ring the changes in broad Annandale on the 


* Development of Doctrine, p. 55, 


The Mind of the Church 107 


Homoousion and the Homojousion. ‘‘He told 
me now that he perceived Christianity itself to 
have been at stake. If the Arians had won, it 
would have dwindled away into a legend.’ © 
Hence the solemn definitions of the mind of the 
Church that have been made by Popes on historic 
occasions—definitions not merely of the mind 
of the contemporary Church but of the historic 
tradition of faith. On the rare occasions when 
the Pope makes such a definition he employs every 
human means to ascertain the tradition of faith 
as well as the mind of the contemporary Church. 
But when he makes his final definition he is pro- 
tected by the Holy Spirit from committing the 
Church to error. This is what is meant by Papal 
Infallibility. The Pope cannot invent new doc- 
trines nor impose new ideals of devotion. He 
can only define the mind of the Church. But 
when he has done so in this solemn manner his 
decision is irreformable and not subject to the 
subsequent consent or disavowal of the Church. 
His is the final court of appeal, and was recog- 
nised as such even in the early days of the Church, 
when so little had been defined and so many 
points, now clear, were wrapped in some ob- 


5 Carlyle, vol. ii, p. 494. 


108 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


scurity.° In the very fragmentary literature left 
to us from the first four Christian centuries there 
is valuable evidence of this. In the second cen- 
tury, for instance, St. Irenaeus, writing about 
Rome, says: By “pointing out... that faith 
announced to all men (Rom. i. 8) which through 
the succession of her bishops has come down to 
us, we confound all those who in any way, 
whether through caprice or vainglory or blind-~- 
ness or perverse opinion, gather otherwise than it 
behoveth. For with this Church, on account of 
her more powerful headship, it is necessary that 
every Church, that is, the faithful everywhere 
dispersed, should agree (or ‘come together’); in 
which Church has always been preserved that tra- 
dition which is from the apostles.’’” 

Papal definitions are rare and, as I have said, 
they are preceded by a thorough investigation of 
the mind of the Church. They do not invent 
new doctrine. But, when the full conditions are 
fulfilled, they are final. As Father Cuthbert has 
well said, ““As a matter of fact all organic socie- 
ties appeal to their tradition as a witness to their 
true idea and purpose. But, in the Church, there 


€ See Fortescue’s Papacy in the First Four Centuries; also 
Dom Chapman’s The First Eight General Councils and Papal 
Infallibility. 

7 Haer, iii, 3 A.D., 185. 


The Mind of the Church 109 


is the further claim that this tradition is divinely 
safeguarded against the errors of human judg- 
ment through the organic union of the Church 
with Christ as the animating and informing 
principle of its life.” 

Naturally, these definitions of the Church’s 
mind are inadequate expressions of the divine 
reality and cover only a comparatively few, 
though the most vital issues. 

In all else the normal mode of advance in the 
intellectual apprehension of religious truth is 
free discussion. As the late Pope has said, 
“Where there is room for divergent opinions it is 
clearly the right of everyone to express and de- 
fend his own opinion. . . . Let each one freely 
defend his own opinion, but let it be done with 
due moderation, so that no one should consider 
himself entitled to affix on those who merely do 
not agree with his own ideas the stigma of dis- 
loyalty to faith and to discipline.” 

Development is then a natural process in the 
Church. But when such development leads to 
heresy (i.e. to deductions which would under- 
mine the original Christian faith) authority has 
the right to intervene. Apart from the actual 
definitions of faith, such intervention is often 
disciplinary, by way of condemnation or direc- 


110 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


tion, and on the whole it is rare except in times 
of crisis, as when the whole historic faith was 
threatened by the principles of Modernism. Such 
crises are naturally more frequent in an unbeliev- 
ing age when the Church is in what Saint Teresa 
called a “‘state of siege.” 

But the whole conception of Catholic develop- 
ment by which, as Newman said, the Church 
changes in order to remain the same, is clearly 
the antithesis of the Modernist conception, 
which, retaining the ancient creeds, invests them 
with a different meaning. ‘The one regards the 
Church’s revelation as absolutely true (though 
inadequately expressed) , the other as purely rela- 
tive and indeed subjective. 

To the Catholic Christian, Our Lord is the 
Incarnation of the Divine Word or Reason in 
which alone the apparently contradictory truths 
of human wisdom will find their ultimate recon- 
ciliation. “Thus in answer to those who com- 
plained about certain Catholic doctrines that 
“These things are in heathenism; therefore they 
are not Christian,’’ Newman replied, “These 
things are in Christianity; therefore they are not 
heathen.’” The Church is ultimately the “touch- 
stone’ of religious truth. “Thus she is Catholic 
in a threefold sense, being commissioned by 


The Mind of the Church ERE 
Christ to teach (1) all nations, (2) all that He 
has commanded, and (3) in all ages (St. Matt. 
xxvili. 19). Her mission is to ‘“‘a numberless 
flock indeed, comprising in different ways the 
whole human race. For the whole of mankind 
was freed from the slavery of sin by the shedding 
of the blood of Jesus Christ as their ransom, and 
there is no one who is excluded from the benefit 
of this Redemption.” ° 
Her duty is to proclaim the good news to all 
men of good will, as well as to convert the sin- 
ner. Of course there are sins of the intellect. 
But “‘we must hold as certain,’’ wrote Pius IX, 
“that invincible ignorance is not a sin in the 
sight of God. Who will dare to arrogate to him- 
self the right of determining the exact limits of 
such ignorance when he considers the infinitely 
varied and unfathomable influence of social en- 
vironment, character, and so many other circum- 
stances upon which it depends.” ® 
The Catholic maintains then that only the 
full faith of the Church is true; yet that all men 
are called to partake of Truth and even of “‘eter- 
nal life,’”’ though incompletely in this world. If 
it be asked what peculiar benefits the Catholic 


8 Benedict XV’s first encyclical. 
® Allocution “‘Singulari Quadam,’’ Decembef 29th, 1854. 


112 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


gains from his special gift of the fulness of truth 
and life, we need only point to those who have 
accepted that truth and lived that life to the utter- 
most; I mean the Saints. It is they, above all, 
who glory in the Church as the mystical Body of 
Christ. 

But, whether founded on divine fact or human 
fancy, the Catholic Church bears the same fea- 
tures to-day as when St. Irenaeus wrote of her 
in the second century: 


‘The Church, extended to the boundaries 
of the earth, received her faith from the 
Apostles and their disciples. Having re- 
ceived she carefully retains it as if dwell- 
ing in one house, as possessing one soul and 
heart: the same faith she delivers and 
teaches with one accord, and as if gifted 
with one tongue; for though in the world 
there are various modes of speech, the tradi- 
tion of doctrine is one and the same. In 
the Churches of Germany, in those of Spain 
and Gaul, in those of the East, of Egypt 
and of Africa, and in the middle regions, is 
the same belief, the same teaching. For as 
the world is enlightened by one sun, so 
does the preaching of one faith enlighten all 
men that are willing to come to the knowl- 
edge of Truth. Nor among the pastors of 
the Church, does he that is eloquent deliver 
other doctrine, for no one is above his 


The Mind of the Church 113 


master; nor does he that is weak in speech 
diminish the truth of tradition.” 


But is not this boast of unity the very same 
as that made by St. Paul in the previous century: 


He gave some Apostles, and some prop- 
hets, and others some evangelists, and 
others some pastors and doctors, for the 
perfection of the Saints, for the work of the 
ministry, for the edifying of the Body of 
Christ; until we all meet into the unity of 
faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of 
God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure 
of the age of the fulness of Christ: that 
henceforth we be no more children tossed 
to and fro, and carried about with every 
wind of doctrine by the wickedness of men, 
by cunning and craftiness, by which they lie 
in wait to deceive. But doing the truth in 
charity, we may in all things grow up in 
Him Who is the Head, even Christ; from 
Whom the whole body, being compacted 
and fitly joined together by what every joint 
supplieth, according to the operation of the 
measure of every part, maketh increase of 
the body unto the edifying of itself in char- 
ity (Eph. iv. 4-16) .™ 


Let us conclude with a passage of the great 


10 Adversus Haereses L. I. C. X. 

11'To those who complained in a later age that the Church 
had failed, that her unity was gone, St. Augustine replied, 
“What insolence! Is she no longer because thou art not a 
member? She shall be though thou be not’? (Enarrat. in Psal. 
101 Ser’. it). 


114 Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason 


Pascal, which must be given in his own French 
tongue since it speaks of that which is most inti- 
mate tohim. In it he reminds us that whilst the 
Faith makes its appeal to reason it demands of 
us something in the moral order as its practical 
complement: “Il y a trois moyens de croire: la 
raison, la coutume, l’inspiration. La religion 
chrétienne, qui seule a la raison, n’admet pas 
pour ses vrais enfants ceux qui croient sans inspir- 
ation; ce n’est pas qu'elle exclue la raison et la 
coutume, au contraire; mais il faut ouvrir son 
esprit aux preuves, sy confirmer pat la coutume, 
mais s offrir par les humiliations aux inspirations, 
qui seules peuvent faire le vrai et salutaire effet: 
Ne evacuetur crux Christt.’’ ‘This surely was the 
way of all the Saints. Such was their “reasonable 
service.” 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


God and the Supernatural, a Catholic Statement of the Christian 
Faith, ed. by Fr. Cuthbert, O.S.F.C. (Longmans). 

Christ and the Critics (from the German), by Hilarin Felder, 
O.S.F.C., 2 vols. (Burns, Oates % Washbourne). 

Catholicism and Criticism (from the French), by Etienne 
Hugueny, O.P. (Longmans). 

Development of Doctrine, by John Henry Newman (Long- 
mans). 

The Philosophy of Mysticism, by Edward Ingram Watkin 
(Grant Richards). 

The Everlasting Man, by G. K. Chesterton (Hodder & Stough- 
ton). 

Catholic Evidence Outlines, ed. by Maisie Ward (Catholic Truth 
Society). 

The Church and Science (New edition, revised), by Sir Bertram 
Windle, F.R.S. (Catholic Truth Society). 


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